Computational RF Dosimetry of Rodents Cohorts in a Realistic Reverberation Chambers at 900 MHz

Reverberation chambers (RCs) have been widely employed in bioelectromagnetic large-scale rodent bioassays, to investigate potential effects of lifetime RF exposures. Numerical RF dosimetry has been of the utmost importance in determining the range of exposures, in terms of whole-body and organ specific absorption rate (SAR), and its uniformity across large animal cohorts, and therefore may influence key decisions in the design of in-vivo animal studies (exposure levels, number of animals per room, etc.). In this work, we expand prior research on rodents' numerical dosimetry in RCs based on a realistic RC configuration, comprising a mode stirrer and various types of antennas. The exposure prediction modeling involves a MonteCarlo (MC) approach recently developed by the authors, taking into account the animals size distribution, as well as their posture, position and orientation within individual cages. The feasibility of conducting whole-RC dosimetry within a multivariate MC framework for large rodent cohorts at 900 MHz was demonstrated, showing larger whole-body SAR (wbSAR) variability than previously estimated, and suggesting that exposures in some of the cages may be consistently higher or lower than a cohort mean wbSAR target.