Clinically established thermal therapies like thermo ablative approaches or adjuvant hyperthermia treatment rely on accurate thermal dose information for the evaluation and adaptation of the thermal therapy. Intratumoral temperature measurements have been correlated successfully with clinical endpoints. Magnetic resonance imaging is the most suitable technique for non-invasive thermometry avoiding complications related to invasive temperature measurements. Since the advent of MR thermometry two decades ago, numerous MR thermometry techniques have been developed continuously increasing accuracy and robustness for in vivo applications. While this progress was primarily focused on relative temperature mapping, current and future efforts will likely close the gap towards quantitative temperature readings. These efforts are essential to benchmark thermal therapy efficiency, understand temperature related biophysical and physiological processes and to use these insights to set new landmarks for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. With that in mind, this review summarizes and discusses advances in MR thermometry providing practical considerations, pitfalls and technical obstacles constraining temperature measurement accuracy, spatial and temporal resolution in vivo. Established approaches and current trends in thermal therapy hardware are surveyed with respect to potential benefits for MR thermometry.3

The proposed analytical approach can be applied for any patient, coronary stent type, RF coil configuration and RF transmission regime. The generalized approach is of value for RF heating assessment of other passive electrically conductive implants and provides a novel design criterion for RF coils.

Objective: To document and review advances and groundbreaking progress in cardiac and body magnetic resonance (MR) at ultrahigh fields (UHF, B0≥7.0 T) with the goal to attract talent, clinical adopters, collaborations and resources to the biomedical and diagnostic imaging communities. Methods Short abstractThis work documents and reviews advances and progress in cardiac and body magnetic resonance technology at ultrahigh fields and its application in forefront research and in early clinical applications. The achievements of ultrahigh field cardiac and body magnetic resonance are shown to be a powerful motivator and enabler, since the extra speed, signal and imaging capabilities may be invested to overcome the fundamental constraints which continue to hamper traditional cardiac and body magnetic resonance applications at lower magnetic field strengths.p a g e | 7

Purpose: Thermal intervention is a potent sensitizer of cells to chemo-and radiotherapy in cancer treatment. Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a potential clinical target, given the cancer's aggressive nature and resistance to current treatment options. The annular phased array (APA) technique employing electromagnetic waves in the radiofrequency (RF) range allows for localized temperature increase in deep seated target volumes (TVs). Reports on clinical applications of the APA technique in the brain are still missing. Ultrahigh field magnetic resonance (MR) employs higher frequencies than conventional MR and has potential to provide focal temperature manipulation, high resolution imaging and noninvasive temperature monitoring using an integrated RF applicator (ThermalMR). This work examines the applicability of RF applicator concepts for ThermalMR of brain tumors at 297 MHz (7.0 Tesla). Methods: Electromagnetic field (EMF) simulations are performed for clinically realistic data based on GBM patients. Two algorithms are used for specific RF energy absorption rate based thermal intervention planning for small and large TVs in the brain, aiming at maximum RF power deposition or RF power uniformity in the TV for 10 RF applicator designs. Results: For both TVs, the power optimization outperformed the uniformity optimization. The best results for the small TV are obtained for the 16 element interleaved RF applicator using an elliptical antenna arrangement with water bolus. The two row elliptical RF applicator yielded the best result for the large TV. Discussion: This work investigates the capacity of ThermalMR to achieve targeted thermal interventions in model systems resembling human brain tissue and brain tumors.