Electrode Misalignment Correction Algorithms In Magnetic Resonance Electrical Impedance Tomography

M. J. Hamamura, L. T. Muftuler, O. Birgul, O. Nalcioglu Tu & Yuen Center for Functional Onco-Imaging, University of California, Irvine, CA, United States Purpose In Magnetic Resonance Electrical Impedance Tomography (MREIT) electrical currents are injected into an object and the resulting magnetic flux density distribution measured using MRI. These MRI measurements are then used to reconstruct the conductivity distribution within the object. Many of the reported MREIT reconstruction algorithms utilize numerical calculation of the magnetic flux density for a given conductivity distribution using the boundary conditions applied to the real object. This corresponds to matching the position of the electrodes in the numerical computation to that of the actual position of the electrodes on the object. Near an injecting electrode, there exists a large variation in the magnetic flux density. As a result, any misalignment in the position of an electrode can result in significant errors when calculating the difference between the computed magnetic flux density distribution and the MRI-measured magnetic flux density distribution. Such errors may generate artifacts in the final reconstructed conductivity distribution. In this study, we investigate various correction algorithms to reduce these artifacts.