Gradient-based magnetic resonance electrical properties imaging of brain tissues

Electrical properties tomography (EPT) holds promise for noninvasively mapping at high spatial resolution the electrical conductivity and permittivity of biological tissues in vivo using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. In the present study, we have developed a novel gradient-based EPT approach with greatly improved tissue boundary reconstruction and largely elevated robustness against measurement noise compared to existing techniques. Using a 7 Tesla MRI system, we report, for the first time, high-quality in vivo human brain electrical property images with refined structural details, which can potentially merit clinical diagnosis (such as cancer detection) and high-field MRI applications (quantification of local specific absorption rate) in the future.