Magnetic Resonance Electrical Impedance Tomography (MREIT) at 11 Tesla Field Strength: Preliminary Experimental Study

We present a preliminary experimental study of electrical conductivity imaging using an 11T Magnetic Resonance Electrical Impedance Tomography (MREIT) system. The primary goal was to evaluate the noise level in measured magnetic flux density data subject to an injection current. We found that the noise level from the 11T system is about 0.2nT whereas it is about 1.4nT using a 3T system. MREIT conductivity images reconstructed using the magnetic flux density data from the 11T system are much clearer because of the reduced noise level. Our results suggest that the 11T MREIT system will capability to image small conductivity changes induced by spontaneous neural activity. Keywords—MREIT, conductivity image, magnetic flux density, noise level, neural activity