Influence of Specific Absorption Rate Averaging Schemes on Correlation between Mass-Averaged Specific Absorption Rate and Temperature Rise

Abstract The influence of specific absorption rate averaging schemes on the spatial correlation between mass-averaged specific absorption rate and radio-frequency-induced steady-state temperature-rise distributions in the “Visible Human” body model exposed to plane waves in the 30–800 MHz frequency range is investigated through finite-difference time-domain modeling. The averaged specific absorption rate is computed on the basis of the IEEE Std. C95.3-2002 specific absorption rate mass-averaging algorithm, employing 1-g and 10-g averaging tissue masses and several air-inclusion factors. The analysis reveals that the 10-g average specific absorption rate yields larger global correlation with the corresponding radio-frequency-induced temperature-rise distribution for the considered plane-wave exposures, while the dependence on the air-inclusion factor features a distinctive threshold behavior.