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An approximation method for electrical impedance tomography

University of British Columbia

Electrical impedance tomography is an imaging method with applications to geophysics and medical imaging. A new approximation is presented based on Nachman's 2-dimensional construction for closed domains. It improves upon existing approximations by extending the range of application from resolving 2 times the surface conductivity to imaging perfect conductors and insulators. With perfect knowledge of boundary data, this approximation exactly resolves a single conductive disc embedded in a homogenous domain. The problem, however, is ill-posed, and imaging performance degrades quickly as the distance from the boundary increases. The key to the approximation lies in (a) approximating Fadeev's Green's function (b) pre-processing measured voltages based on a boundary-integral equation (c) solving a linearized inverse problem (d) solving a d-bar equation, and (e) scaling the resulting image based on analytical results for a disc. In the development of the approximation, a new formula for Fadeev's Green's function is presented in terms of the Exponential Integral function. Also, new comparisons are made between reconstructions with and without solving the d-bar equation, showing that the added computational expense of solving the d-bar equation is not justified for radial problems. There is no discernible improvement in image quality. As a result, the approximation converts the inverse conductivity problem into a novel one-step linear problem with pre-conditioning of boundary data and scaling of the resulting image. Several extensions to this work are possible. The approximation is implemented for a circular domain with unit conductivity near the boundary, and extensions to other domains, bounded and unbounded should be possible, with non-constant conductivity near the boundary requiring further approximation. Ultimately, further research is required to ascertain whether it is possible to extend these techniques to imaging problems in three dimensions.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2008-08-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1536

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/