Abstract #4191

Determining Electrical Properties Based on Complex B1-Fields Measured in an MR Scanner Using a Multiple Transmit/Receive Coil: A General Approach

Jiaen Liu¹, Xiaotong Zhang¹, Pierre-Francois Van de Moortele², Sebastian Schmitter², Bin He¹,³

¹Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States; ²Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States; ³Institute for Engineering in Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States

Electrical Property Tomography (EPT) aims for noninvasive imaging of electrical conductivity and permittivity of biological tissues at radio frequencies used in MR scanners. For current development of EPT, assumptions about the structure of imaged sample and RF coil, phase distribution and main magnetic field have been adopted to compensate the absence of direct measurement of the absolute B1 phase. Thus, application of EPT has been limited within specific scenarios. In this study, using a multi-channel transmit/receive coil, we introduced and validated experimentally the framework of a new general approach for EPT, which does not depend on previously mentioned assumptions.