A Mismatch Correction Method for Electrode Offset in Electrical Impedance Tomography

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) has attracted research interests in imaging of brain function, detection of breast cancer, monitoring of lung function and other medical fields. For EIT, its image reconstruction is largely affected by variation of electrode placement arranged around the detected object. Note that electrode offset is unavoidable in some medical applications, leading to low-quality reconstructed images or even failure of reconstruction. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to improve reconstruction quality in case of electrode offset. By identifying which electrode moves, mismatched boundary voltage caused by movement of electrode is corrected. After mismatch correction, image reconstruction is conducted with total generalized variation regularization method. To demonstrate performance of the proposed method in suppressing impact of electrode offset on reconstruction, extensive work is carried out. Mismatch corrections for four models under a series of counterclockwise or clockwise movements of a certain electrode are studied. The reconstruction results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the image quality under electrode offset. Even in presence of larger electrode offset and noise, reconstructed images have been greatly improved. Quantitative evaluation is also conducted by calculating relative blur radius (RBR). It is shown that RBR values are much closer to 1 compared with results under mismatch conditions. Image reconstruction when two electrodes move is also investigated which further validate the performance of the proposed method. This method is potential for mismatch correction in some medical applications.