EIT – Electrical Impedance Tomography

Hardware/Software

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) refers to a non-invasive medical imaging technique in which an image of the conductivity or permittivity of part of the body is inferred from surface electrode measurements. Electrical conductivity depends on free ion content and differs considerably between various biological tissues (absolute EIT) or different functional states of one and the same tissue or organ (relative or functional EIT). The majority of EIT systems apply small alternating currents at a single frequency, however, some EIT systems use multiple frequencies to better differentiate between normal and suspected abnormal tissue within the same organ (Multifrequency-EIT or Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy). Typically, conducting surface electrodes are attached to the skin around the body part being examined. Small alternating currents will be applied to some or all of the electrodes, the resulting equi-potentials being recorded from the other electrodes (figures 1 and 2). This process will then be repeated for numerous different electrode configurations and finally result in a two-dimensional tomogram according to the image reconstruction algorithms incorporated.