Reducing the Risk of Gradient Induced EEG Hardware Heating During Simultaneous EEG-fMRI

Placing EEG amplifiers and powerpacks inside the bore creates significant gradient-induced heating at both 7T and 3T, with 7T EPI slew rate ≥88 T/m/s driving amplifier heating.

• Why it matters: Guidelines favor in-bore amplifier placement to improve EEG signal quality and reduce electrode RF heating, but the gradient-switching heating risk for the hardware is not well quantified.
• What they did: The study measured amplifier heating during simultaneous EEG-fMRI at 7T and 3T, testing EPI slew rates and, at 3T, varying the amplifier/powerpack distance from the magnet isocentre by 30 cm.
• The result: At 7T, heating from slew rates ≥88 T/m/s was negated by reducing slew rate to 61 T/m/s; at 3T, increasing distance by 30 cm mitigated amplifier/powerpack heating regardless of sequence parameters.

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