Gradient-based magnetic resonance electrical properties imaging of brain tissues

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2014:2014:6056-9. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2014.6945010.

Abstract

Electrical properties tomography (EPT) holds promise for noninvasively mapping at high spatial resolution the electrical conductivity and permittivity of biological tissues in vivo using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. In the present study, we have developed a novel gradient-based EPT approach with greatly improved tissue boundary reconstruction and largely elevated robustness against measurement noise compared to existing techniques. Using a 7 Tesla MRI system, we report, for the first time, high-quality in vivo human brain electrical property images with refined structural details, which can potentially merit clinical diagnosis (such as cancer detection) and high-field MRI applications (quantification of local specific absorption rate) in the future.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Electric Conductivity
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Neuroimaging / methods*
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Tomography