In vivo conductivity imaging of canine male pelvis using a 3T MREIT system

Abstract

The prostate is an imaging area of growing concern related with aging. Prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia are the most common diseases and significant cause of death for elderly men. Hence, the conductivity imaging of the male pelvis is a challenging task with a clinical significance. In this study, we performed in vivo MREIT imaging experiments of the canine male pelvis using a 3T MRI scanner. Adopting carbon-hydrogel electrodes and a multi-echo pulse sequence, we could inject as much as 10 mA current in a form of 51 ms pulse into the pelvis. Collecting magnetic flux density data inside the pelvis subject to multiple injection currents, we reconstructed cross-sectional conductivity images using a MREIT software package CoReHA. Scaled conductivity images of the prostate show a clear contrast between the central and peripheral zones which are related with prostate diseases including cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia. In our future work, we will focus on prostate cancer model animal experiments.