Specific Absorption Rate in Mothers and Fetuses in the Second and Third Trimesters of Pregnancy

Recently, there has been increasing concern regarding the safety of exposure to RF electromagnetic fields in pregnant females and their fetuses. In this study, we acquired fetal magnetic resonance imaging at 20 26 and 29 weeks from a healthy volunteer of pregnancy and developed the pregnant female models at those weeks of pregnancy by combining the fetal models constructed on the basis of the fetal MRI data and an existing non-pregnant female model. We also estimated the specific absorption rates in those models for whole-body exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields using the finitedifference time-domain method. Index Terms – Specific absorption rate, Finitedifference time-domain method, Computational human model, Mother and fetus, Numerical Dosimetry.