Assessment of electrical impedance endotomography for hardware specification

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study is the quantitative assessment of Electrical Impedance Endotomography (EIE) for the specification of hardware systems. EIE is a modality of Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) where the electrodes are located on a probe placed in the middle of the region of interest. The absence of material boundary to the explored volume and the decrease in sensitivity away from the probe requires specific study. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The method is the derivation of the equation linking explored medium’s conductivity, the sensitivity distribution of the electrode patterns used for data collection and measuring system’s noise and bandwidth. The assessment of EIE was achieved by means of simulations based on realistic data of conductivity and noise level. RESULTS: The derived equation enabled the estimation of the current needed under realistic operating conditions corresponding to prostate imaging. The generalisation to other organs is straightforward. The image reconstructed from the simulated data and from bench experiments were in agreement and showed that the two selected drive patterns, fan3 and adjacent, gave images of similar quality in absence of noise and that adjacent drive requires significantly higher measurement current. CONCLUSION: The study confirmed the feasibility of EIE with achievable hardware specifications. The derived equation enabled the determination of design parameters for the specification of hardware systems corresponding to any given application. The study also showed that EIE is more appropriate for tissue characterisation than for high speed imaging.