Seshadri, S., & Scott, J. B. (2017). Enhancing Skin-Effect Using Surface Roughening and its Potential to Reduce RF Heating from Implant Leads. Presented at the ENZCon 2017, Electronics New Zealand Conference 2017, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Abstract
Patients wearing Deep Brain Stimulators or Spinal Cord Stimulator implants experience heating at radio frequencies when subjected to an Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan that operates at a frequency of 128MHz. One technique to mitigate this heating is applying the concept of loss due to skin-effect on an implant lead wire at MRI frequency. A coaxial resonator of quarter-wavelength with copper conductors was constructed to test the insertion loss using a Vector Network Analyser. The smooth inner copper rod was compared with rough inner copper rod to determine the difference between the quality factor of the resonator. Roughening the surface does enhance the skin-effect loss but the loss is insufficient to translate it to an implant lead which is inserted in a patient.
