Browsing by Subject "Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomographies"

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Open Access
Convection-reaction equation based magnetic resonance electrical properties tomography (cr-MREPT)
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2014) Hafalir, F. S.; Oran, O. F.; Gurler, N.; Ider, Y. Z.
Images of electrical conductivity and permittivity of tissues may be used for diagnostic purposes as well as for estimating local specific absorption rate distributions. Magnetic resonance electrical properties tomography (MREPT) aims at noninvasively obtaining conductivity and permittivity images at radio-frequency frequencies of magnetic resonance imaging systems. MREPT algorithms are based on measuring the B1 field which is perturbed by the electrical properties of the imaged object. In this study, the relation between the electrical properties and the measured B1 field is formulated for the first time as a well-known convection-reaction equation. The suggested novel algorithm, called 'cr-MREPT,' is based on the solution of this equation on a triangular mesh, and in contrast to previously proposed algorithms, it is applicable in practice not only for regions where electrical properties are relatively constant but also for regions where they vary. The convective field of the convection-reaction equation depends on the spatial derivatives of the B1 field, and in the regions where its magnitude is low, a spot-like artifact is observed in the reconstructed electrical properties images. For eliminating this artifact, two different methods are developed, namely 'constrained cr-MREPT' and 'double-excitation cr-MREPT.' Successful reconstructions are obtained using noisy and noise-free simulated data, and experimental data from phantoms.
Open Access
Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT) based on the solution of the convection equation using FEM with stabilization
(Institute of Physics Publishing, 2012-07-27) Oran, O. F.; Ider, Y. Z.
Most algorithms for magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT) concentrate on reconstructing the internal conductivity distribution of a conductive object from the Laplacian of only one component of the magnetic flux density (∇ 2B z) generated by the internal current distribution. In this study, a new algorithm is proposed to solve this ∇ 2B z-based MREIT problem which is mathematically formulated as the steady-state scalar pure convection equation. Numerical methods developed for the solution of the more general convectiondiffusion equation are utilized. It is known that the solution of the pure convection equation is numerically unstable if sharp variations of the field variable (in this case conductivity) exist or if there are inconsistent boundary conditions. Various stabilization techniques, based on introducing artificial diffusion, are developed to handle such cases and in this study the streamline upwind Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) stabilization method is incorporated into the Galerkin weighted residual finite element method (FEM) to numerically solve the MREIT problem. The proposed algorithm is tested with simulated and also experimental data from phantoms. Successful conductivity reconstructions are obtained by solving the related convection equation using the Galerkin weighted residual FEM when there are no sharp variations in the actual conductivity distribution. However, when there is noise in the magnetic flux density data or when there are sharp variations in conductivity, it is found that SUPG stabilization is beneficial.