Temperature Management and Radiofrequency Heating During Pediatric MRI Scans

Measuring human body temperature during a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) session is an imperative. Conceptually, the body can experience temperature elevation via several energetic exchange mechanisms. Typically pediatric patients are smaller than adult patients, and for this reason have less body mass. Nonetheless, owing due to the smaller size, more energy in the form of stronger gradient fields and longer selective radiofrequency pulses are required because of the smaller field of view and typically slightly higher resolution requirements of pediatric MRI. Given the lower mass and higher energy deposition, it would appear that the pediatric patient is at risk for burns during MRI. In fact there are other competing mechanisms at play that include higher heart rate, higher respiratory rate, favorable (for cooling or offloading of heat) surface area-to-volume ratio, and the natural cooling effect via inhibition of the body's thermoregulatory mechanisms of compressed anesthetic gasses that enter the core of the pediatric patient. Many times the real world issue of pediatric temperature regulation tends toward concerns of keeping the pediatric patient warm enough for the duration of the MRI scanning session, yet in a small percentage of cases (4%) body temperature may raise by more than 1 degrees C. In this article, we present our temperature findings in this very special environment.