Conductivity Anisotropy Influence on Acoustic Sources for Magnetoacoustic Tomography With Magnetic Induction

As the multi-physics imaging approach, magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction (MAT-MI) attracts more and more attentions, focusing on image reconstruction for conductivity isotropic tissues.

By introducing vector analyses to electromagnetic stimulation and magnetoacoustic excitation for a single-layer cylindrical conductivity anisotropic model, the acoustic source strength (ASS) of MAT-MI is derived in explicit formula and the influence of the anisotropic conductivity tensor is also analyzed.

Theoretical and numerical studies demonstrate that the ASS generated at the tissue boundary is composed of an alternating current (AC) fluctuation and a direct current (DC) bias, where the distribution of the AC fluctuation with respect to the spatial angle exhibits a double-period cosine function, and the DC bias remains constant at each angle. The dependences of the AC fluctuation and the DC bias on the anisotropic component ratio (ACR) and the conductivity tensor are proved by numerical results, which are also verified by the special cases of the zero AC fluctuation for the conductivity isotropic medium and the negative DC bias of the low-conductivity medium.

With the measurements of the ASS around the model, the anisotropic conductivity tensor can be reconstructed by the amplitudes of the AC fluctuation and the DC bias with the conductivity of the isotropic surrounding medium.

The favorable results provide a new method for anisotropic conductivity measurement, and suggest the application potential of MAT-MI in biomedical imaging and nondestructive testing for conductivity anisotropic tissues.