Integration of denoising, inpainting and local harmonic Bz algorithm in MREIT imaging of intact animals

Conductivity imaging based on the current-injection MRI technique has been developed in mag-netic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT). Injection current through a pair of surface electrodes induces a magnetic flux density distribution inside an imaging object, which results in extra field inhomogeneity. We can extract phase changes related with the cur-rent injection and obtain an image of the induced magnetic flux density. Without rotating the object inside the bore, we can measure only one component Bz of the magnetic flux density B = (Bx, By, Bz). Based on a relation between the internal conductivity distribution and Bz data subject to multiple current injections, one may reconstruct cross-sectional conductivity im-ages. As the image reconstruction algorithm, we have been using the harmonic Bz algorithm in numerous experimental studies. Performing conductivity imaging of intact animal and human subjects, we found technical difficulties that are originated from the MR signal void phenom-ena in local regions of bones, lungs and gas-filled tubular organs. Measured Bz data inside such a problematic region contains an excessive amount of noise that deteriorates the conductivity image quality. In order to alleviate this technical problem, we applied hybrid methods incorpo-rating the ramp-preserving denoising, the harmonic inpainting with isotropic diffusion and ROI imaging using the local harmonic Bz algorithm. These methods allow us to produce conductiv-ity images of intact animals with best achievable quality. We suggest a guideline to choose a hybrid method depending on the overall noise level and existence of distinct problematic regions of MR signal void