Hardware for quasi-single-shot multifrequency magnetic induction tomography (MIT): the Graz Mk2 system

Magnetic induction tomography (MIT) has been suggested by several groups for the contact-less mapping of the passive electrical properties of tissues via AC magnetic fields in the frequency range between several tens of kHz and several tens of MHz. Multifrequency MIT as an analog to multifrequency EIT has been tried and first image reconstructions have been demonstrated with phantoms. MIT appears to yield comparable images to EIT but offers the advantage of being non-contacting. In the beta-dispersion range of most tissues the method is challenging because the signals are very small and buried in noise. In order to minimize drifts and systematic errors fast data acquisition is therefore pivotal. This paper presents a method for single-shot MIT which allows us to acquire the data for a multifrequency image with an analog bandwidth of 50 kHz-1.5 MHz which covers a good part of the beta-dispersion of many tissues. The transmit (TX) coils are simultaneously driven by individual power amplifiers with a multisinus pattern with up to 3 A(pp). The amplifiers are configured as current sources so as not to perturb the excitation fields by inappropriately terminated coils. The separation of the different TX channels after reception is achieved by splitting up the carrier frequencies into individual subcarriers with a narrow spacing of at most 300 Hz. In this way every TX coil is identifiable by its own subcarrier but the whole excitation band is contained within a few kHz. The real and imaginary parts of the received signals are extracted efficiently with FFT. The system noise and the sources for low-frequency perturbations are analyzed and characterized.