Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT): conductivity and current density imaging

This paper reviews the latest impedance imaging technique called Magnetic Resonance Electrical Impedance Tomography (MREIT) providing information on electrical conductivity and current density distributions inside an electrically conducting domain such as the human body. The motivation for this research is explained by discussing conductivity changes related with physiological and pathological events, electromagnetic source imaging and electromagnetic stimulations. We briefly summarize the related technique of Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) that deals with cross-sectional image reconstructions of conductivity distributions from boundary measurements of current-voltage data. Noting that EIT suffers from the ill-posed nature of the corresponding inverse problem, we introduce MREIT as a new conductivity imaging modality providing images with better spatial resolution and accuracy. MREIT utilizes internal information on the induced magnetic field in addition to the boundary current-voltage measurements to produce three-dimensional images of conductivity and current density distributions. Mathematical theory, algorithms, and experimental methods of current MREIT research are described. With numerous potential applications in mind, future research directions in MREIT are proposed.