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

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Applied Physics
• Computational Electromagnetics

Background:

• Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive imaging technique.
• Accurate conductivity mapping is crucial for EIT applications.
• Known internal boundaries can potentially improve EIT reconstruction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate an EIT method for conductivity mapping with known internal boundaries.
• To implement advanced electrode models using the Boundary Element Method (BEM) for the forward problem.
• To assess the accuracy of the inverse solution against experimental data.

Main Methods:

• Boundary Element Method (BEM) implementation for EIT forward problem with advanced electrode models.
• Development of inverse problem solution utilizing known internal boundaries and derived Jacobians.
• Experimental validation using two EIT phantoms: a homogeneous cubical tank and a cylindrical tank with agar inhomogeneities.

Main Results:

• BEM forward model, including electrode models, shows high accuracy.
• Inverse solution accurately reconstructs conductivity maps.
• Phantom experiments achieved conductivity reconstruction errors less than 2% for agar objects.

Conclusions:

• The proposed EIT method with known internal boundaries provides accurate conductivity mapping.
• BEM implementation with advanced electrode models is effective for the forward problem.
• Experimental results validate the efficacy of the developed inverse solution for EIT.