GPU accelerated FDTD solver and its application in MRI

The finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is a popular technique for computational electromagnetics (CEM). The large computational power often required, however, has been a limiting factor for its applications. In this paper, we will present a graphics processing unit (GPU)-based parallel FDTD solver and its successful application to the investigation of a novel B1 shimming scheme for high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The optimized shimming scheme exhibits considerably improved transmit B₁ profiles. The GPU implementation dramatically shortened the runtime of FDTD simulation of electromagnetic field compared with its CPU counterpart. The acceleration in runtime has made such investigation possible, and will pave the way for other studies of large-scale computational electromagnetic problems in modern MRI which were previously impractical.