Measuring Electric Fields Produced by MRI Gradient Coils Using a Patch Antenna Probe

Abstract

As a part of this work a small patch antenna probe was developed to measure the variation in the electric field produced by gradient coils within an MRI in the presence of any active implantable medical devices (AIMDs). This probe was designed, fabricated, and tested within a gradient coil mimicking dB/dt exposure platform. A 2×1 cm small patch antenna followed by an instrumentational amplifier was chosen to measure the electric fields. Probe was fabricated using a 4-layer PCB. The fabricated probe was used to monitor the electric fields within the phantom in the gradient coil environment. To verify the observed behavior of the probe a simulation study was performed using Sim4Life. This study aims to assess the performance of this probe in a tissue mimicking environment within the coil.