Three-dimensional MREIT simulator (MREITSim)

Magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT) is being developed to produce high-resolution cross-sectional conductivity images of an object. In MREIT, we scan the imaging object using an MRI scanner while injecting low-frequency current through surface electrodes. This produces change in the phase of precessing protons which is reflected in the MRI phase image. The conductivity imaging method in MREIT is thus based on static bioelectromagnetism and physics of MRI. In this paper, we describe a three-dimensional MREIT simulator (MREITSim) to numerically simulate the underlying physical phenomena in MREIT. We demonstrate the static bioelectromagnetism simulation and MREIT k-space data simulation as applications of this simulator. The simulator will be useful in developing new MREIT pulse sequences and conductivity image reconstruction algorithms.