Imaging pathologic pulmonary air and fluid accumulation by functional and absolute EIT

The increasing use of EIT in clinical research on severely ill lung patients requires a clarification of the influence of pathologic impedance distributions on the validity of the resulting tomograms. Significant accumulation of low-conducting air (e.g. pneumothorax or emphysema) or well-conducting liquid (e.g. haematothorax or atelectases) may conflict with treating the imaging problem as purely linear. First, we investigated the influence of stepwise inflation and deflation by up to 300 ml of air and 300 ml of Ringer solution into the pleural space of five pigs on the resulting tomograms during ventilation at constant tidal volume. Series of EIT images representing relative impedance changes were generated on the basis of a modified Sheffield back projection algorithm and ventilation distribution was displayed as functional (f-EIT) tomograms. In addition, a modified simultaneous iterative reconstruction technique (SIRT) was applied to quantify the resistivity distribution on an absolute level scaled in Omega m (a-EIT). Second, we applied these two EIT techniques on four intensive care patients with inhomogeneous air and fluid distribution and compared the EIT results to computed tomography (CT) and to a reference set of intrathoracic resistivity data of 20 healthy volunteers calculated by SIRT. The results of the animal model show that f-EIT based on back projection is not disturbed by the artificial pneumo- or haematothorax. Application of SIRT allows reliable discrimination and detection of the location and amplitude of pneumo- or haematothorax. These results were supported by the good agreement between the electrical impedance tomograms and CT scans on patients and by the significant differences of regional resistivity data between patients and healthy volunteers.