Studying the resistivity imaging of chicken tissue phantoms with different current patterns in Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT)

A current injection pattern in Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) has its own current distribution profile within the domain under test. Hence, different current patterns have different sensitivity, spatial resolution and distinguishability. Image reconstruction studies with practical phantoms are essential to assess the performance of EIT systems for their validation, calibration and comparison purposes. Impedance imaging of real tissue phantoms with different current injection methods is also essential for better assessment of the biomedical EIT systems. Chicken tissue paste phantoms and chicken tissue block phantoms are developed and the resistivity image reconstruction is studied with different current injection methods. A 16-electrode array is placed inside the phantom tank and the tank is filled with chicken muscle tissue paste or chicken tissue blocks as the background mediums. Chicken fat tissue, chicken bone, air hole and nylon cylinders are used as the inhomogeneity to obtained different phantom configurations. A low magnitude low frequency constant sinusoidal current is injected at the phantom boundary with opposite and neighboring current patterns and the boundary potentials are measured. Resistivity images are reconstructed from the boundary data using EIDORS and the reconstructed images are analyzed with the contrast parameters calculated from their elemental resistivity profiles. Results show that the resistivity profiles of all the phantom domains are successfully reconstructed with a proper background resistivity and high inhomogeneity resistivity for both the current injection methods. Reconstructed images show that, for all the chicken tissue phantoms, the inhomogeneities are suitably reconstructed with both the current injection protocols though the chicken tissue block phantom and opposite method are found more suitable. It is observed that the boundary potentials of the chicken tissue block phantoms are higher than the chicken tissue paste phantom. SNR of the chicken tissue block phantoms are found comparatively more and hence the chicken tissue block phantom is found more suitable for its lower noise performance. The background noise is found less in opposite method for all the phantom configurations which yields the better resistivity images with high PCR and COC and proper IR_Mean and IR_Max neighboring method showed higher noise level for both the chicken tissue paste phantoms and chicken tissue block phantoms with all the inhomogeneities. Opposite method is found more suitable for both the chicken tissue phantoms, and also, chicken tissue block phantoms are found more suitable compared to the chicken tissue paste phantom.     

Projection Error Propagation-based Regularization (PEPR) method for resistivity reconstruction in Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT)

A novel Projection Error Propagation-based Regularization (PEPR) method is proposed to improve the image quality in Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT). PEPR method defines the regularization parameter as a function of the projection error developed by difference between experimental measurements and calculated data. The regularization parameter in the reconstruction algorithm gets modified automatically according to the noise level in measured data and ill-posedness of the Hessian matrix. Resistivity imaging of practical phantoms in a Model Based Iterative Image Reconstruction (MoBIIR) algorithm as well as with Electrical Impedance Diffuse Optical Reconstruction Software (EIDORS) with PEPR. The effect of PEPR method is also studied with phantoms with different configurations and with different current injection methods. All the resistivity images reconstructed with PEPR method are compared with the single step regularization (STR) and Modified Levenberg Regularization (LMR) techniques. The results show that, the PEPR technique reduces the projection error and solution error in each iterations both for simulated and experimental data in both the algorithms and improves the reconstructed images with better contrast to noise ratio (CNR), percentage of contrast recovery (PCR), coefficient of contrast (COC) and diametric resistivity profile (DRP).     

Resistivity imaging of a reconfigurable phantom with circular inhomogeneities in 2D-electrical impedance tomography

Resistivity imaging of a reconfigurable phantom with circular inhomogeneities is studied with a simple instrumentation and data acquisition system for Electrical Impedance Tomography. The reconfigurable phantom is developed with stainless steel electrodes and a sinusoidal current of constant amplitude is injected to the phantom boundary using opposite current injection protocol. Nylon and polypropylene cylinders with different cross sectional areas are kept inside the phantom and the boundary potential data are collected. The instrumentation and the data acquisition system with a DIP switch-based multiplexer board are used to inject a constant current of desired amplitude and frequency. Voltage data for the first eight current patterns (128 voltage data) are found to be sufficient to reconstruct the inhomogeneities and hence the acquisition time is reduced. Resistivity images are reconstructed from the boundary data for different inhomogeneity positions using EIDORS-2D. The results show that the shape and resistivity of the inhomogeneity as well as the background resistivity are successfully reconstructed from the potential data for single or double inhomogeneity phantoms. The resistivity images obtained from the single and double inhomogeneity phantom clearly indicate the inhomogeneity as the high resistive material. Contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and contrast recovery (CR) of the reconstructed images are found high for the inhomogeneities near all the electrodes arbitrarily chosen for the entire study.     

Surface electrode switching of a 16-electrode wireless EIT system using RF-based digital data transmission scheme with 8 channel encoder/decoder ICs

A Radio Frequency (RF) based digital data transmission scheme with 8 channel encoder/decoder ICs is proposed for surface electrode switching of a 16-electrode wireless Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) system. A RF based wireless digital data transmission module (WDDTM) is developed and the electrode switching of a EIT system is studied by analyzing the boundary data collected and the resistivity images of practical phantoms. An analog multiplexers based electrode switching module (ESM) is developed with analog multiplexers and switched with parallel digital data transmitted by a wireless transmitter/receiver (T_x/R_x) module working with radio frequency technology. Parallel digital bits are generated using NI USB 6251 card working in LabVIEW platform and sent to transmission module to transmit the digital data to the receiver end. The transmitter/receiver module developed is properly interfaced with the personal computer (PC) and practical phantoms through the ESM and USB based DAQ system respectively. It is observed that the digital bits required for multiplexer operation are sequentially generated by the digital output (D/O) ports of the DAQ card. Parallel to serial and serial to parallel conversion of digital data are suitably done by encoder and decoder ICs. Wireless digital data transmission module successfully transmitted and received the parallel data required for switching the current and voltage electrodes wirelessly. 1 mA, 50 kHz sinusoidal constant current is injected at the phantom boundary using common ground current injection protocol and the boundary potentials developed at the voltage electrodes are measured. Resistivity images of the practical phantoms are reconstructed from boundary data using EIDORS. Boundary data and the resistivity images reconstructed from the surface potentials are studied to assess the wireless digital data transmission system. Boundary data profiles of the practical phantom with different configurations show that the multiplexers are operating in the required sequence for common ground current injection protocol. The voltage peaks obtained at the proper positions in the boundary data profiles proved the sequential operation of multiplexers and successful wireless transmission of digital bits. Reconstructed images and their image parameters proved that the boundary data are successfully acquired by the DAQ system which in turn again indicates a sequential and proper operation of multiplexers as well as the successful wireless transmission of digital bits. Hence the developed RF based wireless digital data transmission module (WDDTM) is found suitable for transmitting digital bits required for electrode switching in wireless EIT data acquisition system.     

Studies on thin film based flexible gold electrode arrays for resistivity imaging in electrical impedance tomography

Practical phantoms are essential to assess the electrical impedance tomography (EIT) systems for their validation, calibration and comparison purposes. Metal surface electrodes are generally used in practical phantoms which reduce the SNR of the boundary data due to their design and development errors. Novel flexible and biocompatible gold electrode arrays of high geometric precision are proposed to improve the boundary data quality in EIT. The flexible gold electrode arrays are developed on flexible FR4 sheets using thin film technology and practical gold electrode phantoms are developed with different configurations. Injecting a constant current to the phantom boundary the surface potentials are measured by a LabVIEW based data acquisition system and the resistivity images are reconstructed in EIDORS. Boundary data profile and the resistivity images obtained from the gold electrode phantoms are compared with identical phantoms developed with stainless steel electrodes. Surface profilometry, microscopy and the impedance spectroscopy show that the gold electrode arrays are smooth, geometrically precised and less resistive. Results show that the boundary data accuracy and image quality are improved with gold electrode arrays. Results show that the diametric resistivity plot (DRP), contrast to noise ratio (CNR), percentage of contrast recovery (PCR) and coefficient of contrast (COC) of reconstructed images are improved in gold electrode phantoms.     

基于 Tikhonov 和 TV 混合正则化的接地 网电阻抗成像算法研究

电阻抗成像技术(EIT)是解决接地网腐蚀定位问题的方法之一,为了改善接地网 EIT 逆问题的病态性,提高求解稳定 性以及重建图像清晰度,提出了经典吉洪诺夫正则化(Tikhonov)和全变差正则化(TV)相结合的混合正则化(Tikhonov-TV)接地 网成像算法。 首先,在循环测量原理的基础上,创新地借助 COMSOL 与 MATLAB 联合仿真求取接地网 EIT 正问题模型电压数 据;其次,在理论分析基础上,通过 Tikhonov-TV 正则化的 EIT 算法分别求解基于先验拓扑信息和未知拓扑信息的两种接地网逆 问题模型的场域电阻率分布;最后仿真和实验对比了 Tikhonov、TV 以及 Tikhonov-TV 3 种正则化算法的接地网 EIT 重建图像,并 采用电阻率均方误差(Resistivity MSE)和截线电阻率曲线图来衡量图像质量,实验得出基于先验拓扑信息的 1 处和 2 处腐蚀情 况下 Resistivity MSE 分别达到 1. 27×10 -15 和 1. 59×10 -15 ,电阻率均方误差最小。 结果表明,提出的 Tikhonov-TV 正则化算法有效 地改善了 EIT 逆问题的病态性,收敛性能最优,重建图像效果优于 Tikhonov 和 TV 正则化算法。     

Maximum entropy regularization method for electrical impedance tomography combined with a normalized sensitivity map

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) aims to estimate the electrical properties at the interior of an object from current–voltage measurements on its boundary. To overcome ill-posedness, regularization techniques such as Tikhonov regularization as well as some iterative methods were developed. In difference imaging between two different conductivity distributions, a conductivity change can be seen relatively non-negative to the medium with lower conductivity through some safeguard techniques. Therefore, the concept of maximum entropy from information theory and statistic mechanics can be used for this purpose. Furthermore, because the sensing field is “soft-field” and non-uniform, the same anomaly may produce different reconstruction signatures depending on its location within the image plane. Therefore, in this paper, maximum entropy based on general Tikhonov regularization, combined with normalized sensitivity map, is proposed to solve the inverse problem of EIT. Image reconstruction was carried out by maximum entropy regularization (MER) with a normalized sensitivity map and compared with the results from conjugate gradient method (CG), Tikhonov regularization, and CG with a normalized sensitivity map accordingly. Simulation and experiment results indicate that reconstructed images with higher quality can be obtained by MER with a normalized sensitivity map.     

基于 V-ResNet 的电阻抗层析成像方法

电阻抗层析成像技术(EIT)因其非侵入和可视化等特性为人体肺部空间特性的监测提供了一种有效的方法。但是EIT的逆问题具有严重的非线性、病态性和欠定性,使得图像重建结果含有严重的伪影。针对上述问题,提出了一种由预映射、特征提取、深度重建以及残差去噪四个模块构成的V-ResNet的深度网络成像算法,实现对场域空间位置和电导率参数分布的重建。该算法有效地增加了前馈信息的多重传递并解决了深度网络的梯度消失问题,同时残差去噪模块有效地平滑了图像边界。采用相对误差(RE)和结构相似度(SSIM)来衡量成像质量,实验得出RE的平均值为0.14,SSIM平均值为0.96。仿真与实验结果表明,基于V-ResNet的成像算法与传统的成像算法相比,图像重建结果边界清晰,空间分辨率高。     

Reconstruction of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) images based on the expectation maximum (EM) method

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) calculates the internal conductivity distribution within a body using electrical contact measurements. The image reconstruction for EIT is an inverse problem, which is both non-linear and ill-posed. The traditional regularization method cannot avoid introducing negative values in the solution. The negativity of the solution produces artifacts in reconstructed images in presence of noise. A statistical method, namely, the expectation maximization (EM) method, is used to solve the inverse problem for EIT in this paper. The mathematical model of EIT is transformed to the non-negatively constrained likelihood minimization problem. The solution is obtained by the gradient projection-reduced Newton (GPRN) iteration method. This paper also discusses the strategies of choosing parameters. Simulation and experimental results indicate that the reconstructed images with higher quality can be obtained by the EM method, compared with the traditional Tikhonov and conjugate gradient (CG) methods, even with non-negative processing.     

Design of wearable and wireless electrical impedance tomography system

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive approach to reconstruct the cross-section impedance image of the body. Many EIT systems and impedance image reconstruction algorithms have been proposed in previous studies. However, most of these EIT systems are bulky to cause the limitation of applications. In this study, a wearable and wireless EIT system is proposed to reconstruct impedance images non-invasively and wirelessly. By microminiaturizing the conventional EIT system, the proposed system can provide the advantages of small volume and wireless transmission to reduce the application limitation of conventional EIT systems. Finally, the phantom experiment is tested to validate the performance of the proposed EIT system. The experimental results show the average BR value of the reconstructed image obtained by the proposed system being 1.3 ± 0.2 and the averaged location error ratio being about 6.27 ± 3.14%. Therefore, the proposed wearable and wireless EIT system can be viewed as a good system prototype and may be applied to more clinical applications in the future.     

一种单源电流激励方法的电阻抗成像仿真及实验

为电阻抗断层成像技术的实际应用选择一种较优的电流激励方法,本文研究了一种单电流源两电极对向激励方法。通过计算机仿真、物理模型实验和初步的动物实验,结合电阻抗成像的反投影算法,与传统的邻近电流激励的电阻抗成像进行比较研究,并分析图像质量、定位误差以及重构误差。结果表明,与邻近激励相比,基于对向激励方法的电阻抗成像的抗噪性能较好。因此在临床较强噪声环境下,对向激励方法更适合于电阻抗成像的实际应用。     

Online conductivity calibration methods for EIT gas/oil in water flow measurement

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a fast imaging technique displaying the electrical conductivity contrast of multiphase flow. It is increasingly utilised for industrial process measurement and control. In principle, EIT has to obtain the prior information of homogenous continuous phase in terms of conductivity as a reference benchmark. This reference significantly influences the quality of subsequent multiphase flow measurement. During dynamic industrial process, the conductivity of continuous phase varies due to the effects from the changes of ambient and fluid temperature, ionic concentration, and internal energy conversion in fluid. It is not practical to stop industrial process frequently and measure the conductivity of continuous phase for taking the EIT reference. If without monitoring conductivity of continuous phase, EIT cannot present accurate and useful measurement results. To online calibrate the electrical conductivity of continuous phase and eliminate drift error of EIT measurement, two methods are discussed in this paper. Based on the linear approximation between fluid temperature and conductivity, the first method monitors fluid temperature and indirectly calibrates conductivity. In the second method, a novel conductivity cell is designed. It consists of a gravitational separation chamber with refreshing bypass and grounded shielding plate. The conductivity of continuous phase is directly sensed by the conductivity cell and fed to EIT system for online calibration. Both static and dynamic experiments were conducted to demonstrate the function and accuracy the conductivity cell.     

Validating dilute settling suspensions numerical data through MRI,UVP and EIT measurements

The measurement of fluid dynamic quantities are of great interest both for extending the range of validity of current correlations to be used in equipment design and for verification of fundamental hydrodynamic models. Studies where comparisons are made between imaging techniques serve to provide confidence on the validity of each technique for the study of multiphase flow systems. The advantage of cross-validation is that it can help establish the limitations of each technique and the necessary steps towards improvement. A small amount of comparative studies are found in the literature and none of them reports the study of settling particles suspension flow using simultaneously Ultrasonic Velocity Profiling (UVP), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT), at least not to the best of the authors knowledge. In the present paper the authors report efforts made on the characterization of dilute suspensions of glass particles in turbulent flow, with increasing flow velocities and particles concentrations, in a pilot rig at a laboratorial scale, using both MRI, EIT and UVP: direct comparisons of EIT, MRI and UVP measurements acquired and mixture model numerical simulations are presented and the level of agreement explored.     

A feasible process tomography and spectroscopy measurement system to determine carbon dioxide absorption

The present study has demonstrated that Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) are viable measurement techniques to be used in the measurement and monitoring of carbon dioxide absorption across the scales.EIS is able to provide information regarding the absorption of carbon dioxide gas on the molecular level hence can be used to search for the optimal system by studying the kinetics of the absorption process and measuring the solubility of carbon dioxide in different solvents of interest.EIT, however, is more suited to studying the absorption on the macro-scale of the process in terms of aspects such as homogeneity of absorption thus can be used to look at the design of the absorption columns themselves. In the present study the experiments were restricted to studying the absorption of carbon dioxide in water as it was found that the conductivity of industrially relevant solvents such as monoethanolamine was too high for use with the conventional EIT hardware.     

Coping with electrode polarization for development of DC-Driven electrical impedance tomography

An electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system design is proposed for imaging of phase distribution in gas-water two-phase flow from boundary measurement of electrical potentials in response to direct current (DC) injection. DC injection simplifies substantially the system design, but introduces problems due to polarization of injection electrodes. Electrode polarization means charge accumulation on the electrode-water interface causing a drift in the interfacial potential difference. The polarization problems are coped with by using dedicated electrodes for injection and potential measurement, and using a current source unaffected by the polarization of current-carrying electrodes (CCEs). Furthermore, the polarization of CCEs is controlled, to lessen the possible influence on the sensing electrodes (SEs), by using a short (milliseconds in width) pulse for injection with a charge balanced injection strategy. The impact of electrode polarization and the effectiveness of countermeasures introduced in the present design are discussed through comparisons of measured boundary potentials and of images reconstructed for a simple object simulating large bubbles in water.     

一种基于U2-Net模型的电阻抗成像方法

电阻抗成像(EIT)是一种实现场域内电导率分布情况图像重建的成像技术.传统的电阻抗成像算法成像精度较低,为解决此问题,提出一种基于U2-Net深度学习模型的新型电阻抗图像重建方法.首先,以U2-Net模型为基础,创新地提出了拼接层(CAT)的概念用于数据扩展,使得U2-Net的输入层结构简单,运算速度快;其次,使用仿真...     

Optical boundary reconstruction of tokamak plasmas for feedback control of plasma position and shape

A new diagnostic is developed to reconstruct the plasma boundary using visible wavelength images. Exploiting the plasma's edge localized and toroidally symmetric emission profile, a new coordinate transform is presented to reconstruct the plasma boundary from a poloidal view image. The plasma boundary reconstruction is implemented in MATLAB and applied to camera images of Mega-Ampere Spherical Tokamak discharges. The optically reconstructed plasma boundaries are compared to magnetic reconstructions from the offline reconstruction code EFIT, showing very good qualitative and quantitative agreement. Average errors are within 2 cm and correlation is high. In the current software implementation, plasma boundary reconstruction from a single image takes 3 ms. The applicability and system requirements of the new optical boundary reconstruction, called OFIT, for use in both feedback control of plasma position and shape and in offline reconstruction tools are discussed.     

Image reconstruction algorithm for capacitively coupled electrical resistance tomography

Capacitively Coupled Electrical Resistance Tomography (CCERT), which is on the basis of Capacitively Coupled Contactless Conductivity Detection (C⁴D), is a novel electrical tomography technique. As a developing technique, more research work should be undertaken. This work focuses on the study of image reconstruction algorithm of CCERT. Combining Tikhonov regularization principle and Simultaneous Iterative Reconstruction Technique (SIRT), a new hybrid image reconstruction algorithm is proposed. Tikhonov regularization is introduced to obtain the initial reconstructed image. SIRT is used to obtain the final reconstructed image. With a 12-electrode CCERT prototype, image reconstruction experiments are carried out. Experimental results show that the images reconstructed by the proposed image reconstruction algorithm are satisfactory and are in accord with the actual distributions of two-phase flows. The research work also indicates that the proposed image reconstruction algorithm is more suitable for image reconstruction of CCERT, comparing with the conventional image reconstruction algorithms of Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) and Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT).     

Computer simulation of three-dimensional heavy ion beam trajectory imaging techniques used for magnetic field estimation

A magnetic field mapping technique via heavy ion beam trajectory imaging is being developed on the Madison Symmetric Torus reversed field pinch. This paper describes the computational tools created to model camera images of the light emitted from a simulated ion beam, reconstruct a three-dimensional trajectory, and estimate the accuracy of the reconstruction. First, a computer model is used to create images of the torus interior from any candidate camera location. It is used to explore the visual field of the camera and thus to guide camera parameters and placement. Second, it is shown that a three-dimensional ion beam trajectory can be recovered from a pair of perspectively projected trajectory images. The reconstruction considers effects due to finite beam size, nonuniform beam current density, and image background noise. Third, it is demonstrated that the trajectory reconstructed from camera images can help compute magnetic field profiles, and might be used as an additional constraint to an equilibrium reconstruction code, such as MSTFit.     

Magnetic resonance-coupled fluorescence tomography scanner for molecular imaging of tissue

A multichannel spectrally resolved optical tomography system to image molecular targets in small animals from within a clinical MRI is described. Long source/detector fibers operate in contact mode and couple light from the tissue surface in the magnet bore to 16 spectrometers, each containing two optical gratings optimized for the near infrared wavelength range. High sensitivity, cooled charge coupled devices connected to each spectrograph provide detection of the spectrally resolved signal, with exposure times that are automated for acquisition at each fiber. The design allows spectral fitting of the remission light, thereby separating the fluorescence signal from the nonspecific background, which improves the accuracy and sensitivity when imaging low fluorophore concentrations. Images of fluorescence yield are recovered using a nonlinear reconstruction approach based on the diffusion approximation of photon propagation in tissue. The tissue morphology derived from the MR images serves as an imaging template to guide the optical reconstruction algorithm. Sensitivity studies show that recovered values of indocyanine green fluorescence yield are linear to concentrations of 1 nM in a 70 mm diameter homogeneous phantom, and detection is feasible to near 10 pM. Phantom data also demonstrate imaging capabilities of imperfect fluorophore uptake in tissue volumes of clinically relevant sizes. A unique rodent MR coil provides optical fiber access for simultaneous optical and MR data acquisition of small animals. A pilot murine study using an orthotopic glioma tumor model demonstrates optical-MRI imaging of an epidermal growth factor receptor targeted fluorescent probe in vivo.