Lung Ventilation Monitoring Incorporating Prior Information by Electrical Impedance Tomography

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT), as a relatively new medical imaging method, has the preferable features as inexpensive, safe, non-invasive and portable. Complementary to existing methods, it is expected to reconstruct accurate images of impedance changes in the object. One of the approaches to producing an accurately reconstructed image is the inclusion of prior information regarding the physical geometry of the object. A physical model incorporating the prior information of human thorax has been developed using a commercial software tool COMSOL. In this paper the developed model is presented along with lung ventilation experimental data. The visualization results of lung ventilation indicate that EIT incorporating prior information is a promising technique which has the potential to be applied in future for clinical diagnoses and monitoring.