Correlation analysis between the complex electrical permittivity and relaxation time of tissue mimicking phantoms in 7T MRI

Dielectric relaxation theory describes the complex permittivity of a material in an alternating field, in particular Debye theory relates the time it takes for an applied field to achieve the maximum polarization and the electrical properties of the material. Although, Debye’s equations were proposed for electrical polarization, in this study, we investigate the correlation between the magnetic longitudinal relaxation time T1 and the complex electrical permittivity of tissue-mimicking phantoms using a 7T magnetic resonance scanner. We created phantoms that mimicked several human tissues with specific electrical properties. The electrical properties of the phantoms were measured using bench-test equipment. T1 values were acquired from phantoms using MRI. The measured values were fitted with functions based on dielectric estimations, using relaxation times of electrical polarization, and the mixture theory for dielectrics. The results show that, T1 and the real permittivity are correlated; therefore, the correlation can be approximated with a rational function in the case of water-based phantoms. The correlation between index loss and T1 was determined using a fitting function based on the Debye equation and mixture theory equation, in which the fraction of the materials was taken into account. This phantom study and analysis provide an insight into the application relaxation times used for estimating dielectric properties. Currently the measurement of electrical properties based on dielectric relaxation theory uses an antenna, sometimes invasive, that irradiates electric field into a small sample, and is not possible to create a map of electrical properties for a complex structure like the human body. This study could be further used to compute electrical properties maps of tissues by scanning images and measuring T1 maps.