Electrical impedance tomography. Determination of the boundary of an object inserted into a water-filled cylinder.

In order to circumvent the electrode position determination problem in static electrical impedance tomography, it is possible to insert the object to be imaged into a water-filled cylinder on which the electrodes are at fixed and known positions. It has previously been shown that if the boundary of the internally placed object and the conductivity of the salty water in the cylinder are known, then a significant improvement in the conductivity image of the object is obtained. An algorithm for finding the boundary of an internally placed object is developed based on the finite element method (FEM). The boundary is assumed to obey a parametric model and the parameters are estimated by inverting a matrix representing the sensitivity of the boundary voltage measurements to parameter variations. The algorithm assumes that the object's internal conductivity is uniform and known. Simulation studies show that if the internal conductivity is not uniform to the extent found in the arm cross-sections, up to 9% error in the boundary, as measured from a centrally placed reference point, may result. It is also shown that if previous knowledge about the boundary shape is used to model the boundary with fewer numbers of parameters, then the boundary may be found with less error.