Magneto-Acousto-Electrical Tomography for High Resolution Electrical Conductivity Contrast Imaging

Different kinds of biological tissues have the different value of electrical conductivity. Moreover, the anomalies of electrical conductivity could represent the changes of pathological condition, especially the cancer in its early-stage. Thus, the distribution of conductivity of biological tissue arouses great interest for medical imaging. This paper introduced novel results of multi-physics method called Magneto-Acousto-Electrical Tomography (MAET). The method has two advantages, one is high contrast due to the imaging parameters of electrical conductivity, and the other is good spatial resolution for the excitation of ultrasound. However, the spatial resolution in MAET system reported in previous literatures is low. In this paper, we established a model to simulate the MAET system. Moreover, we also conducted experimenters with a platform and obtained 0.5 mm spatial resolution, which is a big progress over the results reported in previous literatures (1 mm). The distribution of the electrical conductivity contrast were explored by the method of experiment, which indicated that this method may provide new information of tumor, and more importantly. detect tissue of physiological or pathological condition in its early-stage.