Current density imaging using directly measured harmonic \(B_z\) data in MREIT (Q382569)

Summary: Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT) measures magnetic flux density signals through the use of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in order to visualize the internal conductivity and/or current density. Understanding the reconstruction procedure for the internal current density, we directly measure the second derivative of \(B_z\) data from the measured \(k\)-space data, from which we can avoid a tedious phase unwrapping to obtain the phase signal of \(B_z\). We determine optimal weighting factors to combine the derivatives of magnetic flux density data, \(\nabla^2 B_z\), measured using the multi-echo train. The proposed method reconstructs the internal current density using the relationships between the induced internal current and the measured \(\nabla^2 B_z\) data. Results from a phantom experiment demonstrate that the proposed method reduces the scanning time and provides the internal current density, while suppressing the background field inhomogeneity. To implement the real experiment, we use a phantom with a saline solution including a balloon, which excludes other artifacts by any concentration gradient in the phantom.