Three-Dimensional Magneto-Acousto-Electrical Computed Tomography (3D MAE-CT): A Preliminary Study Using Ultrasound Linear Array Transducer

Magneto-acousto-electrical tomography (MAET) is a hybrid imaging method that combines the high spatial resolution of ultrasonography with the high contrast of electrical impedance tomography (EIT). While most previous studies on MAET have focused on two-dimensional imaging, our recent research proposed a novel three-dimensional (3D) MAET method using B-mode and translational scanning. This method has been the first to reconstruct a 3D volume image of conductivity interfaces. However, this method has its limitations in mapping irregular shapes of conductivity. To address this challenge, we propose a 3D magneto-acousto-electrical computed tomography (3D MAE-CT) method utilizing an ultrasound linear array transducer in this work. Both phantom and in vitro experiments were conducted to validate our proposed method. The results from the phantom experiments demonstrate that our method can map the 3D volume conductivity with high spatial resolution. The oblique angles extracted from the 3D image closely match practical value, with the relative error ranging between -2.80% and 4.07%. Furthermore, the in vitro experiment successfully obtained a 3D image of a chicken heart, marking the first MAET 3D conductivity image of a tissue sample to date.