Standardisation for safe implant scanning in MRI    

A joint Research Project within the European Metrology Research Programme        

Overview Workplan           

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work-package 1

Smart Impants

The aim of this work package is to develop, evaluate and explore the uncertainties of a novel implant safety concept in MRI in which implants communicate with an MRI scanner. These smart medical implants can utilize embedded sensor measurements to assess and mitigate radio-frequency (RF) induced implant heating. 

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work-package 2

Reference hardware

Parallel transmit technology in MRI has been pioneered by European MRI vendors two decades ago but still it is only available on research scanners. The few fully parallel transmision (pTx)-capable machines on the market must be switched to a non-CE mode to use this feature. The single reason for that is that pTx is still not adequately covered in harmonised standards. New normative research to overcome this obstacle would thus not only promote implant safety but boost the development of MRI on an even broader level.

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work-package 3

Gradient induced implant heating

While heating of metallic passive implants (e.g., hip replacement implants) due to switched gradient fields in MRI can, in some cases, exceed radiofrequency (RF) induced heating, and pose an often-unrecognised hazard for implant carriers, this is not reflected in documentary standards. Some normative documents, e. g. ASTM F2182 ignore this effect completely, while others e.g., ISO/TS 10974 are limited in scope just to those implant categories where that effect is least relevant.

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Open source

The open-source nature of this project will yield a wide range of different data and research output which will be made publicly available.