Adaptive Mesh Refinement Techniques for 3-D Skin Electrode Modeling

In this paper, we develop a 3-D adaptive mesh refinement technique. The algorithm is constructed with an electric impedance tomography forward problem and the finite-element method in mind, but is applicable to a much wider class of problems. We use the method to evaluate the distribution of currents injected into a model of a human body through skin contact electrodes. We demonstrate that the technique leads to a significantly improved solution, particularly near the electrodes. We discuss error estimation, efficiency, and quality of the refinement algorithm and methods that allow for preserving mesh attributes in the refinement process.