Calculation of Electrical Properties from B1+ Maps - A Comparison of Methods

Selaka Bandara Bulumulla¹, Seung-Kyun Lee¹, Teck Beng Desmond Yeo¹

Extracting electrical properties (relative permittivity and conductivity) from B1+ maps is a promising method that has applications in local SAR estimation, RF hyperthermia treatment planning and diagnosis of tissue malignancy. In this work, we compare the two primary calculation methods, Laplacian and Integral based, under the constraint that both methods use a constant number of B1+ samples to calculate permittivity and conductivity. Our results indicate that under the constraint, (a) both methods predict accurate values, (b) Laplacian based method is advantageous for rapid estimates and (c) Integral based method is more robust with noisy B1+ maps.