Improved methods to determine optimal currents in electrical impedance tomography

An electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system that uses the optimal current method to inject currents and the regularized Newton-Raphson algorithm to reconstruct an image of resistivity distribution is discussed. Iterative methods to derive the optimal current patterns through iterative physical measurements are developed. Direct methods to first determine the resistance matrix of a resistivity distribution through a set of current bases is injected and the measured voltage responses are stored. This permits iterative reconstruction techniques to operate on the stored data without requiring lengthy data taking from the object and reduces the effects of motion artifacts. The direct methods have superior performance as compared to the iterative methods in both optimal current and voltage generation. The results obtained with three sets of current bases are studied.