Quantitative conductivity and permittivity imaging using magnetic resonance electrical properties tomography (MREPT)

The frequency-dependent electrical properties (Conductivity and Permittivity) of biological tissue provide important diagnostic information, e.g., tumor characterization (usually the electrical properties of tumor will be higher than that of normal tissues) and also play an important role in estimating the local Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). Magnetic Resonance Electrical Properties Tomography (MREPT) is a method to map the conductivity and permittivity of the tissue using MRI. RF coil of a standard MR system is sufficient for EPT, whereas other methods uses separate electrodes, currents or RF probes for determining the electrical properties of the tissue. This makes MREPT a very promising technique to obtain the conductivity and permittivity in vivo without the need of additional hardware. We will be investigating the non-invasive measurements of the dielectric parameters using MREPT and the implementation of the sequence on the MRI scanner.

Researcher: Prakash Vasudevan