Effects of frequency, irradiation geometry and polarisation on computation of SAR in human brain

The power absorbed by the human brain has possible implications in the study of the central nervous system-related biological effects of electromagnetic fields. In order to determine the specific absorption rate (SAR) of radio frequency (RF) waves in the human brain, and to investigate the effects of geometry and polarisation on SAR value, the finite-difference time-domain method was applied for the SAR computation. An anatomically realistic model scaled to a height of 1.70 m and a mass of 63 kg was selected, which included 14 million voxels segmented into 39 tissue types. The results suggested that high SAR values were found in the brain, i.e. ∼250 MHz for vertical polarisation and 900-1200 MHz both for vertical and horizontal polarisation, which may be the result of head resonance at these frequencies.