Absolute Multiphase Electrical Capacitance Tomography Reconstruction Using a Level Set Algorithm

Abstract Multiphase flow measurement is a vital topic in the process industries especially the oil and gas industry due to the critical need of measuring the individual phases of any multiphase process. One new method for multiphase flow measurement is the use of process tomography, however, multiphase flow imaging is a challenging topic in industrial process tomography that is still in the stage of research. In this article, simulation and experimental results of reconstructing the permittivity profile of multi-phase material from absolute Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) data are presented. A multiphase narrowband level set algorithm is developed to reconstruct the interfaces between three or four phase permittivity values. The level set algorithm is capable of performing absolute value ECT reconstruction, which is to image multiphase permittivity by using only one set of ECT measurement data. The algorithm is tested with high contrast and low contrast multiphase data, which adds more to the challenge. Simulation and experimental results shows the superiority of this algorithm over classical pixel based image reconstruction methods. Absolute multiphase ECT reconstruction using a level set algorithm is presented and critically evaluated for the first time in this study which was first published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2016.