Predicting temperature increase through local SAR estimation by B1 mapping: A phantom validation at 7T

: It has been shown that Electrical Properties d(EPs) of biological tissues can be derived from MR-based B1 measurement. A strong appeal for these `Electrical Property Tomography' (EPT) methods is to estimate real-time and subject-specific local specific absorption rate (SAR) induced by RF transmission. In order to investigate the feasibility of EPT-based local SAR estimation, following previously proposed EPT protocols, induced local SAR has been firstly estimated under one B1 shim setting for a heating sequence at 7T; whereas with the same acquired B1 information, induced local SAR under a different B1 shim setting has been further predicted. Both of the SAR results have been compared to measured temperature changes using MRI Thermometry based on the proton chemical shift.