Project Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Nevzat G. GENÇER

Project Type: TUBITAK 1001 Scientific and Technological Research Projects Funding Program

Project Budget: 720000 TL

Project Duration: 36 months

Project Start Date: 01 October 2019

Funded Personnel: 2 PhD Students (Full-Time), 2 PhD Students (Part-Time), 1 MSc Students (Full-Time)

Magneto-Acousto Electrical Tomography (MAET) is a new medical imaging modality to image the electrical properties (conductivity and permittivity) of body tissues. When ultrasound is applied to a body in a static magnetic field, electrical currents are generated. The current sources propagating in the direction of the ultrasound beam result in a potential  and magnetic field distributions. The voltages (magnetic fields) measured by the surface electrodes (receiver coils) are used to reconstruct images.  MAET has been applied to develop prototype systems using permanent magnets (~0.5 T), utilizing electrodes for voltage measurements, to obtain images with small field of view, and to obtain conductivity images at a single frequency.

In this project, magnetic measurements will be used for image reconstruction. The performance of multi-frequency electrical property imaging will be investigated  using LPA ultrasound transducers in high field magnets (1.5-3T). The system will be assessed using numerical simulations and experimental studies conducted with a larger field of view using novel receiver coils. A new data acquisition system will be developed with low noise amplifiers and associated signal processing units.

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