A feasibility study of magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography for prostate cancer detection

Abstract

Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT) is an imaging technique that reconstructs the conductivity distribution inside the subject using magnetic flux density or current density measurements acquired by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. Since the primary prostate cancer diagnostic method, prostate biopsy, has limited accuracy in cancer diagnosis and malignant tissues have shown significantly different electrical properties from normal or benign tissues, MREIT has potential application in prostate cancer detection. The feasibility of utilizing MREIT in detecting prostate cancer was evaluated via a series of well-designed computer simulations in the present study. MREIT techniques with three different electrode configurations (external, trans-rectal, and trans-urethral electrode arrays) and two different reconstruction algorithms (J-substitution algorithm and harmonic Bz algorithm) were successfully developed. The performance of different MREIT techniques were evaluated and compared based on the imaging accuracy of the reconstructed conductivity distribution in the prostate. Without the presence of noise, the external MREIT achieves a better imaging accuracy than the two endo-MREIT (trans-rectal and trans-urethral) techniques, while the trans-urethral MREIT achieves the best imaging accuracy in noisy environments. We also found that the J-substitution reconstruction algorithm consistently offered better imaging accuracy than the harmonic Bz algorithm. When Gaussian distributed random noise with a standard deviation of 0.25 nT was added, the relative errors (RE) between the reconstructed and target conductivity distributions inside the prostate were observed to be 14.18% and 17.35% by the trans-urethral MREIT with the J-substitution and harmonic Bz algorithms respectively. The lower REs of 9.64% and 11.17% were achieved respectively when the standard deviation of noise was reduced to 0.05 nT. The simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of applying MREIT for prostate cancer detection.

Non-invasive obstetric anal sphincter injury diagnostics using impedance spectroscopy

“…Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is commonly used for estimating body composition 29 . Finally, electrical impedance tomography (EIT) – imaging method using impedance – was preliminarily utilized for prostate cancer detection 30 .…”

Transcutaneous innervation zone imaging from high-density surface electromyography recordings

“…The performance of TIZI was evaluated by the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) between P p and P t (PCC pt ) and that between P r and P t (PCC rt ), as well as by the localization error (LE) defined as the Euclidean distances between the centers of the P p and P t (LE pt ) and that between P r and P t (LE rt ). PCC pt and PCC rt were calculated based on equations ( 6) and ( 7) [45,46].…”

Three-Dimensional Holographic Electromagnetic Imaging for Accessing Brain Stroke

“…In the past three decades, several research groups have investigated EMI for imaging the electromagnetic properties (EPs, conductivity, permittivity, and permeability) of biological tissues using low-frequency (<10MHz) electromagnetic (EM) spectrum [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. EMI has been applied to detect several diseases, including gastric emptying [ 10 ], lung ventilation [ 11 ], breast cancer [ 12 ], prostate cancer [ 13 ], pulmonary perfusion [ 14 ], and acute cerebral stroke [ 15 ]. EMI has been extensively studied for monitoring neurological diseases and injuries, including hemorrhagic stroke [ 16 ], ischemic stroke [ 17 ], and brain edema [ 18 ].…”