Lung Ventilation Reconstruction by Electrical Impedance Tomography Based on Physical Information

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a relatively new medical imaging method, and has the advantages of being inexpensive, safe, non-invasive and portable. Complementary to CT and MRI, it reconstructs images of impedance changes from the EIT sensor arrays. Its principal shortcoming is poor spatial resolution. One approach to improving spatial resolution is to include prior information regarding the physical geometry of the object. In this paper, a forward model regarding the physical information of the human thorax has been developed using a commercial software tool COMSOL, and lung ventilation experiments are undertaken and illustrated. Compared to the circular model, the visualization results of lung ventilation indicate that EIT incorporating physical information is a promising technique with the potential to be applied in future clinical diagnoses and monitoring.