Effects of excitation- to measurement-lead planes separation on conductivity distributions computed by Electrical Impedance Tomography

This paper addresses the problem of improving the resolution and fidelity of conductivity images obtained by Electrical Impedance Tomography. The approach taken is to develop electrode configurations which increase the number of linearly independent impedance measurements that may be acquired by a given system. The use of electrodes on three separate planes for applying current to the medium and for recording potential differences is investigated by simulations with a 3-D FEM model. Improvement over images reconstructed with the standard coplanar electrodes configuration occurs for low signal to noise ratios and lead planes separated by approximately the same distance as between recording electrodes.