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A 16-channel magnetic induction tomography (MIT) system has been constructed for imaging samples with low conductivities (<10 S m−1) such as biological tissues or ionized water in pipelines. The system has a fixed operating frequency of 10 MHz and employs heterodyne downconversion of the received signals, to 10 kHz, to reduce phase instabilities during signal distribution and processing. The real and imaginary components of the received signal, relative to a synchronous reference, are measured using a digital lock-in amplifier. Images are reconstructed using a linearized reconstruction method based on inversion of a sensitivity matrix with Tikhonov regularization. System performance measurements and images of a pipeline phantom and a human leg in vivo are presented. The average phase precision of the MIT system is 17 millidegrees.

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In an ideal magnetic induction tomography (MIT) system, the coupling between the coils and the sample is entirely by the magnetic field. In a practical system, unwanted electric-field (capacitive) coupling can also exist and cause large errors in the MIT measurements unless the hardware is designed carefully. A series of tests was carried out to assess the magnitude of capacitive coupling present in a 10 MHz MIT system designed for biomedical use and other applications involving low-conductivity samples (

In biomedical magnetic induction tomography (MIT), measurement precision may be improved by incorporating some form of primary field compensation/cancellation scheme. Schemes which have been described previously include gradiometric approaches and the use of 'back-off' coils. In each of these methods, however, the primary field cancellation was achieved only for a single transmitter/receiver combination. For the purpose of imaging, it would be desirable for a fully electronically scanned MIT system to provide a complete set of measurements, all with the primary field cancelled. A single channel suitable for incorporation into an MIT system with planar-array geometry is described. The transmitter is a 6-turn coil of wire 5 cm in diameter. The receiver is a surface mount inductor, of inductance 10 microH, mounted such that, in principle, no net primary field flux threads it. The results of measurements carried out with the single channel system suggest that the signal due to the primary excitation field can be reduced on average by a factor of 298 by the sensor geometry over the operating frequency range 1-10 MHz. The standard deviation and drift of the signal with the system adjusted for maximum primary field cancellation, expressed as a percentage of the signal when the receiver coil was rotated until its axis of sensitivity lay along the primary field, were 0.0009% and 0.009%, respectively. The filter time constant used was 30 ms.