3D EFT imaging with planar electrode array: Numerical simulation

Abstract

Electric field tomography (EFT) is the new modality of the quasistatic electromagnetic sounding of conductive media recently investigated theoretically and realized experimentally. The demonstrated results pertain to 2D imaging with circular or linear arrays of electrodes (and the linear array provides quite poor quality of imaging). In many applications 3D imaging is essential or can increase value of the investigation significantly. In this report we present the first results of numerical simulation of the EFT imaging system with planar array of electrodes which allows 3D visualization of the subsurface conductivity distribution. The geometry of the system is similar to the geometry of our EIT breast imaging system providing 3D conductivity imaging in form of cross-sections set with different depth from the surface. The EFT principle of operation and reconstruction approach differs from the EIT system significantly. So the results of numerical simulation are important to estimate if comparable quality of imaging is possible with the new contactless method. The EFT forward problem is solved using finite difference time domain (FDTD) method for the 8×8 square electrodes array. The calculated results of measurements are used then to reconstruct conductivity distributions by the filtered backprojections along electric field lines. The reconstructed images of the simple test objects are presented. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.