A General Methodology for Quantifying Magnetic Susceptibility with MRI
Abstract
Magnetic susceptibility, as a physical property of materials, plays important roles in many physical, chemical, engineering, and medical applications. Its quantification has become of significant interest in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a commonly used technique in biomedical applications. By far, all prior MRI methods for susceptibility quantification are successful with at least one of the following assumptions: uniform susceptibility distributions in the objects of interest, uniform background fields, and specific geometrical shapes for the objects such as spheres, flat disks, and long cylinders. Quantitative susceptibility imaging has not been achieved for general susceptibility distributions. Here we will present a method for quantifying arbitrary susceptibility distributions with MRI. We will start from first principles, and develop analysis methods to quantify an arbitrary susceptibility distribution inside a localized region on the basis of the magnetic induction field deviations mapped by MRI. This approach is theoretically rigorous and independent of the homogeneity of the applied magnetic fields. Its feasibility will be conceptually demonstrated with computer simulations, with up to 256 unknown susceptibility variables.
- Publication:
-
APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 2004
- Bibcode:
- 2004APS..MAR.J9014L