Electrical impedance tomography of complex conductivitydistributions with noncircular boundary

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) uses low-frequency current and voltage measurements made on the boundary of a body to compute the conductivity distribution within the body. Since the permittivity distribution inside the body also contributes significantly to the measured voltages, the present reconstruction algorithm images complex conductivity distributions. A finite element model (FEM) is used to solve the forward problem, using a 6017-node mesh for a piecewise-linear potential distribution. The finite element solution using this mesh is compared with the analytical solution for a homogeneous field and a maximum error of 0.05% is observed in the voltage distribution. The boundary element method (BEM) is also used to generate the voltage data for inhomogeneous conductivity distributions inside regions with noncircular boundaries. An iterative reconstruction algorithm is described for approximating both the conductivity and permittivity distributions from this data. The results for an off-centered inhomogeneity showed a 35% improvement in contrast from that seen with only one iteration, for both the conductivity and the permittivity values. It is also shown that a significant improvement in images results from accurately modeling a noncircular boundary. Both static and difference images are distorted by assuming a circular boundary and the amount of distortion increases significantly as the boundary shape becomes more elliptical. For a homogeneous field in an elliptical body with axis ratio of 0.73, an image reconstructed assuming the boundary to be circular has an artifact at the center of the image with an error of 20%. This error increased to 37% when the axis ratio was 0.64. A reconstruction algorithm which used a mesh with the same axis ratio as the elliptical boundary reduced the error in the conductivity values to within 0.5% of the actual values     

Optimal experiments in electrical impedance tomography

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a noninvasive imaging technique which aims to image the impedance within a body from electrical measurements made on the surface. The reconstruction of impedance images is a ill-posed problem which is both extremely sensitive to noise and highly computationally intensive. The authors define an experimental measurement in EIT and calculate optimal experiments which maximize the distinguishability between the region to be imaged and a best-estimate conductivity distribution. These optimal experiments can be derived from measurements made on the boundary. The analysis clarifies the properties of different voltage measurement schemes. A reconstruction algorithm based on the use of optimal experiments is derived. It is shown to be many times faster than standard Newton-based reconstruction algorithms, and results from synthetic data indicate that the images that it produces are comparable.     

A quasi-static analysis for a class of induced-current EIT systems using discrete coils

A discrete coil EIT system is investigated for the general case of an eccentric circular inhomogeneity. The solution methodology of the forward problem of this system is explained. An optimization procedure using this forward problem solution is developed to find optimum currents that maximize the distinguishability. For an eccentric inhomogeneity problem, it is shown that the coil currents can be optimized to focus the current density in a region of interest. Optimum coil currents under limited peak coil currents constraint and limited total power constraint are obtained. Representative examples that demonstrate the performance of the system are presented.     

The boundary element method in the forward and inverse problem of electrical impedance tomography

In this paper, a new formulation of the reconstruction problem of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is proposed. Instead of reconstructing a complete two-dimensional picture, a parameter representation of the gross anatomy is formulated, of which the optimal parameters are determined by minimizing a cost function. The two great advantages of this method are that the number of unknown parameters of the inverse problem is drastically reduced and that quantitative information of interest (e.g., lung volume) is estimated directly from the data, without image segmentation steps. The forward problem of EIT is to compute the potentials at the voltage measuring electrodes, for a given set of current injection electrodes and a given conductivity geometry. In this paper, it is proposed to use an improved boundary element method (BEM) technique to solve the forward problem, in which flat boundary elements are replaced by polygonal ones. From a comparison with the analytical solution of the concentric circle model, it appears that the use of polygonal elements greatly improves the accuracy of the BEM, without increasing the computation time. In this formulation, the inverse problem is a nonlinear parameter estimation problem with a limited number of parameters. Variants of Powell's and the simplex method are used to minimize the cost function. The applicability of this solution of the EIT problem was tested in a series of simulation studies. In these studies, EIT data were simulated using a standard conductor geometry and it was attempted to find back this geometry from random starting values. In the inverse algorithm, different current injection and voltage measurement schemes and different cost functions were compared. In a simulation study, it was demonstrated that a systematic error in the assumed lung conductivity results in a proportional error in the lung cross sectional area. It appears that our parametric formulation of the inverse problem leads to a stable minimization problem, with a high reliability, provided that the signal-to-noise ratio is about ten or higher.     

The field of a dipole enclosed in an elliptic anisotropic plasma cylinder

The boundary value problem for the field of an electric dipole enclosed in a thin elliptic anisotropic plasma cylinder with a vacuum cavity is considered. A solution to the problem is obtained and analyzed. The influence of a magnetic field and the cavity of variable size on the resonance electromagnetic field is studied in the case when the shape of the plasma cylinder’s cross section varies. The effect is compared to that observed in the case of a circular plasma cylinder.     

The Method of Calculation of Open and Closed Waveguides,Which Is Based on the Modified Method of Discrete Sources

The problem of calculation of eigenmode characteristics is considered for 3D open dielectric waveguides and waveguides with the anisotropic impedance boundary condition. An efficient algorithm is proposed for finding eigenmodes of waveguides having different cross-sections. It is based on the solution of the auxiliary problem of diffraction of the field of a filamentous source located inside the waveguide. The method is tested using weakly directing dielectric waveguides having circular and elliptical sections and a waveguide with the two-sheeted section. The results of calculation of dielectric waveguides obtained with the help of the proposed method, the method of finite elements, and the method of the integral equation over the waveguide section are compared. The circular and elliptical waveguides and the waveguide having a two-sheeted section with an anisotropic impedance are also investigated. The calculation results are compared with the results obtained with the use of the method of separation of variables and the Galerkin method.     

Electromagnetic impedance tomography (EMIT): a new method for impedance imaging

We propose a new impedance imaging method, electromagnetic impedance tomography (EMIT), in which the boundary electric potential measurements in electrical impedance tomography (EIT) are augmented by measurements of the exterior magnetic field induced by the currents excited in the object by the standard EIT procedures. These magnetic measurements can be obtained reliably and inexpensively by simple pickup coils located around the imaged cross section. We derive expressions for the forward problem and for the Jacobian of the measurements, and propose an iterative reconstruction algorithm using a squared error cost function. The performance of EMIT and EIT is compared in numerical simulations using a finite-element model for the conductivity distribution of several phantoms. Evaluation of the rank and condition of the Jacobian demonstrates that the additional magnetic measurements provided by a few pickup coils in EMIT turn an underdetermined EIT problem into a well-posed one with reasonable condition, or significantly improve the conditioning of the EIT problem when it is already fully determined. Reconstructions of various phantoms reveal that EMIT provides particularly significant visual and quantitative improvement (threefold to tenfold reduction in the root-mean-squared error) in the sensitivity at the center of the object, which is the area most difficult to image using EIT.     

3-D electrical impedance tomography for piecewise constant domains with known internal boundaries

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a badly posed inverse problem, but can be stabilized if one assumes that the conductivity is piecewise constant, with a relatively small number of distinct regions, and that the region boundaries are known, for example from prior anatomical imaging. With this assumption, we introduce a three-dimensional (3-D) boundary element method (BEM) model for the forward EIT map from injected currents to measured voltages, and 3-D inverse solutions for both BEM and the finite element method (FEM) which explicitly take into account the parameterization implied by the known boundary locations. We develop expressions for the Jacobians for both methods, since they are nonlinear, to more rapidly solve the inverse problem. We show simulation results in a torso geometry with the heart and lungs as inhomogeneities. In a simulation study, we could reconstruct the conductive values of some internal organs of a human torso with more than 92% accuracy even with inaccurate internal boundary locations, a randomized rather than constant conductivity profile (with the standard deviation of the Gaussian-distributed conductivities set to 20% of their mean values), signal to measurement noise of 50 dB, and with different meshes used for the forward and inverse problems. BEM and FEM perform similarly, leading to the conclusion that the choice between them should be based on secondary considerations such as computational efficiency or the need to model conductivity anisotropies     

A Kalman filter approach to track fast impedance changes inelectrical impedance tomography

In electrical impedance tomography (EIT), an estimate for the cross-sectional impedance distribution is obtained from the body by using current and voltage measurements made from the boundary. All well-known reconstruction algorithms use a full set of independent current patterns for each reconstruction. In some applications, the impedance changes may be so fast that information on the time evolution of the impedance distribution is either lost or severely blurred. Here, the authors propose an algorithm for EIT reconstruction that is able to track fast changes in the impedance distribution. The method is based on the formulation of EIT as a state-estimation problem and the recursive estimation of the state with the aid of the Kalman filter. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated with a simulation of human thorax in a situation in which the impedances of the ventricles change rapidly. The authors show that with optimal current patterns and proper parameterization, the proposed approach yields significant enhancement of the temporal resolution over the conventional reconstruction strategy     

Forming electrodes for a cylindrical electron beam with an arbitrary cross section

A new form of the exact solution to the exterior problem for a beam representing a fragment of an electron flow with an arbitrary cross section in a planar diode is obtained in the case of emission in the ?? mode. Particular forms of the general expression for circular and elliptical cross sections are presented. The case of a temperature-limited emission is considered.     

Electrical impedance tomography for piecewise constant domains using boundary element shape-based inverse solutions

Shape-based solutions have recently received attention for certain ill-posed inverse problems. Their advantages include implicit imposition of relevant constraints and reduction in the number of unknowns, especially important for nonlinear ill-posed problems. We apply the shape-based approach to current-injection electrical impedance tomography (EIT) reconstructions. We employ a boundary element method (BEM) based solution for EIT. We introduce two shape models, one based on modified B-splines, and the other based on spherical harmonics, for BEM modeling of shapes. These methods allow us to parameterize the geometry of conductivity inhomogeneities in the interior of the volume. We assume the general shape of piecewise constant inhomogeneities is known but their conductivities and their exact location and shape is not. We also assume the internal conductivity profile is piecewise constant, meaning that each region has a constant conductivity. We propose and test three different regularization techniques to be used with either of the shape models. The performance of our methods is illustrated via both simulations in a digital torso model and phantom experiments when there is a single internal object. We observe that in the noisy environment, either simulated noise or real sources of noise in the experimental study, we get reasonable reconstructions. Since the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) expected in modern EIT instruments is higher than that used in this study, these reconstruction methods may prove useful in practice.     

Electrode boundary conditions and experimental validation for BEM-based EIT forward and inverse solutions

In this paper, we present theoretical developments and experimental results for the problem of estimating the conductivity map inside a volume using electrical impedance tomography (EIT) when the boundary locations of any internal inhomogeneities are known. We describe boundary element method (BEM) implementations of advanced electrode models for the forward problem of EIT. We then use them in the inverse problem with known internal boundaries and derive the associated Jacobians. We report on the results of two EIT phantom studies, one using a homogeneous cubical tank, and one using a cylindrical tank with agar conductivity inhomogeneities. We test both the accuracy of our BEM forward model, including the electrode models, as well as our inverse solution, against the measured data. Results show good agreement between measured values and both forward-computed tank voltages and inverse-computed conductivities; for instance, in a phantom experiment, we reconstructed the conductivities of three agar objects inside a cylindrical tank with an error less than 2% of their true value.     

Higher order impedance boundary conditions applied to scattering bycoated bodies of revolution

In this paper higher order impedance boundary conditions will be employed in the solution of scattering by coated conducting bodies of revolution. The higher order impedance solution reduces the total number of unknowns relative to the exact solution, and produces a system matrix which is less dense than that of the exact solution. The construction of the solution involves two distinct steps. In the first step the body of revolution is replaced by an equivalent set of electric and magnetic currents on its exterior surface which generate the true fields outside the body. An integral equation relating these currents through the free space Green's function is derived. Step two employs the higher order impedance boundary condition to relate the electric and magnetic currents on the surface of the body. This replaces the rigorous solution of the interior problem. The higher order impedance boundary conditions are derived by obtaining an exact impedance boundary condition in the spectral domain for the coated ground plane, approximating the impedances as ratios of polynomials in the transform variables, and employing the Fourier transform. The resulting spatial domain differential equations are solved in conjunction with the integral equation using the method of moments. Several examples of bistatic and monostatic radar cross section for coated bodies of revolution are used to illustrate the accuracy of the higher order impedance boundary condition solution relative to the standard impedance boundary condition solution and the exact solution. The effects of coating thickness, loss, and curvature on the accuracy of the solution are discussed     

A Nonuniform Coaxial Line with an Isoperimetric Sheath Deformation

For impedance matching in transmission lines, nonuniform lines, obeying laws of taper like the exponential, the Dolph-Chebyshev etc., are used. For the nonuniform coaxial line, constructional advantages can be derived for the same electrical performance if it has a uniform circular inner conductor with an outer conductor having an isoperimetric transition, from circular to elliptic cross section, in conformity with the established laws of taper. This problem has been examined in the paper, and the required design formulas as well as the design charts are developed. The effect of an impedance and geometric discontinuity at the low-impedance junction of such a nonuniform line and the concentric circular uniform line is discussed. The use of the isoperimetric transition line in microwave components is indicated.     

Modeling of uniaxial anisotropic fibers with noncircular cross section by the method of lines

Fibers of noncircular cross sections are analyzed by a new algorithm based on the method of lines with discretization lines of unequal length. The material may have uniaxial anisotropy. The tangential field components have been matched at the noncircular interface of the structures. Results are shown for waveguides with elliptical and star-shaped cross section. To study the accuracy of the proposed algorithm, the results have been compared with other methods.     

A reconstruction algorithm for breast cancer imaging with electrical impedance tomography in mammography geometry

The conductivity and permittivity of breast tumors are known to differ significantly from those of normal breast tissues, and electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is being studied as a modality for breast cancer imaging to exploit these differences. At present, X-ray mammography is the primary standard imaging modality used for breast cancer screening in clinical practice, so it is desirable to study EIT in the geometry of mammography. This paper presents a forward model of a simplified mammography geometry and a reconstruction algorithm for breast tumor imaging using EIT techniques. The mammography geometry is modeled as a rectangular box with electrode arrays on the top and bottom planes. A forward model for the electrical impedance imaging problem is derived for a homogeneous conductivity distribution and is validated by experiment using a phantom tank. A reconstruction algorithm for breast tumor imaging based on a linearization approach and the proposed forward model is presented. It is found that the proposed reconstruction algorithm performs well in the phantom experiment, and that the locations of a 5-mm-cube metal target and a 6-mm-cube agar target could be recovered at a target depth of 15 mm using a 32 electrode system.     

Computer-Aided Junctions Design of H-Plane Waveguide with Full-Height Ferrites of Arbitrary Shape

A method for solving the problem of H-plane waveguide junctions with a full-height ferrite post of arbitrary shape is proposed. The junctions are allowed to have arbitrary cross section and arbitrary number of ports. The method is based on the integral equations derived from the reciprocity theorems in both the ferrite region and the air region ranging from the reference planes of connecting waveguides to the inside of the junction. For comparison with the previously published experimental and theoretical results, Y junctions with a circular ferrite post are first treated. Excellent agreement has been found between the experimental data and the numerical results obtained by the present method. The performance of a Y-junction circulator with a triangular ferrite post having rounded angles is next investigated. Both the ferrite geometry and the internal dc magnetic field are examined in detail. For this geometry the calculated 20-dB bandwidth has been found to become greater as the cross section of the ferrite approaches a regular triangle from a circle.     

CHARACTERISTIC IMPEDANCE OF SPECIFIC TRANSMISSION LINES WITH OFFSET INNER CONDUCTORS

The partial charge simulation method is presented to solve the characteristicimpedance of the transmission line of specific cross section with an offset inner conductor.Thismethod has a higher accuracy due to the accurate satisfaction of the boundary condition on theouter conductor.The combined method of the Gauss elimination and optimization is used tosolve the equation of charge simulation,and it is an effective method for increasing the accuracyand assuring the convergence.The Green's functions of five transmission lines(i.e,with circular,elliptic,rectangular,trough and slab conductor)are given.     

Impact of model shape mismatch on reconstruction quality in electrical impedance tomography

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a low-cost, noninvasive and radiation free medical imaging modality for monitoring ventilation distribution in the lung. Although such information could be invaluable in preventing ventilator-induced lung injury in mechanically ventilated patients, clinical application of EIT is hindered by difficulties in interpreting the resulting images. One source of this difficulty is the frequent use of simple shapes which do not correspond to the anatomy to reconstruct EIT images. The mismatch between the true body shape and the one used for reconstruction is known to introduce errors, which to date have not been properly characterized. In the present study we, therefore, seek to 1) characterize and quantify the errors resulting from a reconstruction shape mismatch for a number of popular EIT reconstruction algorithms and 2) develop recommendations on the tolerated amount of mismatch for each algorithm. Using real and simulated data, we analyze the performance of four EIT reconstruction algorithms under different degrees of shape mismatch. Results suggest that while slight shape mismatch is well tolerated by all algorithms, using a circular shape severely degrades their performance.     

Statistical estimation of resistance/conductance by electrical impedance tomography measurements

This paper is built upon the assumption that in electrical impedance tomography, vectors of voltages and currents are linearly dependent through a resistance matrix. This linear relationship was confirmed experimentally and may be derived analytically under certain assumptions regarding electrodes (Isaacson, 1991). Given measurement data consisting of voltages and currents, we treat this relationship as a linear statistical model. Thus, our goal is not to reconstruct the image but directly estimate its electromagnetic properties reflected in the resistance and/or conductance matrix using electrical impedance tomography (EIT) measurements of voltages and currents on the periphery of the body. Since no inverse problem is involved the algorithm for estimation merely reduces to one matrix inversion. We estimate the impedance resistance matrix using well established statistical inference techniques for linear regression models. We provide a comprehensive treatment for a two-dimensional homogeneous body of a circular shape, by which many concepts of electrical impedance tomography, such as width of electrodes, the difference between voltage-current and current-voltage systems are illustrated. Our theory may be applied to various tests including EIT hardware calibration and whether the medium is homogeneous. These tests are illustrated on phantom agar data.