A parallel FDTD scheme for electromagnetic analysis and design of MRI system

This paper presents a parallel-computing FDTD simulator for electromagnetic analysis and design applications in Magnetic Resonance Imaging system. It is intended to be a complete, high-performance FDTD model of an MRI system including all temporal RF and low-frequency field generating units and electrical models of the patient. The developed MRI-dedicated FDTD algorithm is adapted to a parallel computing architecture with the MPI library. Its capabilities are illustrated in two distinct, large-scale field problems. One concerns the interaction of RF-fields with human tissue at high magnitude fields. The other includes the characterization of the temporal eddy currents induced in the cryostat vessel during gradient switching. The presented examples demonstrate the computational efficiency and extended analyses available due to the parallel FDTD framework.