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Rotational electrical impedance tomography

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IOP PUBLISHING MEASUREMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Meas. Sci. Technol. 18 (2007) 2958–2966 doi:10.1088/0957-0233/18/9/028

Rotational electrical impedance

tomography
Cheng-Ning Huang1, Fang-Ming Yu2 and Hung-Yuan Chung1
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Rd,
Jhongli City, 32001 Taoyuan, Taiwan, Republic of China
2
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, St John’s University, 499,
Sec. 4, Tam King Road Tamsui, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China
E-mail: hychung@ee.ncu.edu.tw

Received 11 December 2006, in final form 22 June 2007

Published 10 August 2007
Online at stacks.iop.org/MST/18/2958
Abstract
A high performance rotational EIT (REIT) system capable of producing
better quality EIT images is developed by expanding the independent
measurements. In this system, electrodes are attached to a rotational
phantom tank which is driven by a microstepping motor. The measurement
site of the electrode pairs can be precisely changed. We increase the
independent measurements by moving electrodes from the original location
to a subsequent location. Increasing the number of independent
measurements enhances the resolution of the impedance image and
improves the quality arising from the ill-posed condition. The experimental
results clearly show the improvement of the REIT image. It is believed that
this improvement will provide help in the field of electrical impedance
tomography.
Keywords: rotational electrodes, electrical impedance tomography, number
of electrodes
(Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)

1. Introduction over the current medical imaging methods for biomedical

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a powerful tool
for mapping the electrical properties of objects. The cross-
sectional distribution of the object’s electrical impedance can
be accessed from measurements made on its surface. Electrical
currents are applied to the object through electrodes, and the
resulting potential at the electrodes is measured. Since the
relation between the measurement data and the impedance
distribution is an inverse problem, the impedance distribution
inside the object can be calculated by solving the inverse
problem.
Electrical impedance tomography is a low cost, real
time and portable imaging technique. Because of the above
potential advantages, the EIT technique has already been
developed for many industrial applications, such as in the fields
of process tomography, non-destructive testing, geological
studies and medical imaging (Djamdji et al 1996, Dickin and
Wang 1996, Szczepanik and Rucki 2000, York 2001, Huang
et al 2003). The EIT technique also has several advantages
applications. For example, the procedure for measuring
impedance does not produce any harmful radiation, so it
presents no known hazards to the subject. It should therefore
be possible to use an EIT system to monitor physiological
functioning in the long term. Furthermore, the EIT system
can be entirely implemented using electrical techniques, which
makes it a relatively cheap system from which data can be
collected very rapidly. The impedance image has been applied
in many clinical applications, but there are few commercial
medical EIT systems available. This is because the essential
spatial resolution of the impedance image cannot yet be
achieved, and this technique also has an intrinsically poor
signal-to-noise ratio (Brown 2001). Thus the image quality
of EIT is not comparable with that produced by established
medical imaging systems, such as computerized tomography
(CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The quality of an impedance image is limited by the
ill-posed problem of EIT and the number of electrodes
(Hou and Mo 2002). An ill-posed problem is one where

0957-0233/07/092958+09$30.00 © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK 2958


a small error in measurement will result in a large error
in the reconstructed image. Ill-posed problems occur due
to the nature of impedance image reconstruction, so are
unavoidable. However we still can improve the performance
of the EIT system by increasing the number of electrodes.
For a conventional N electrode EIT system, we could
obtain at most N(N − 1)/2 individual measurement data
to reconstruct the impedance distribution. By acquiring
more measurement data, a finer mesh is applied to get
a closer approximation without impairing the ill-posed
condition. This means that the resolution of the EIT image
can be improved by increasing the number of electrodes.
Nevertheless, increasing the electrodes is not a final solution
for improving spatial resolution. The total number of
electrodes is restricted by the volume of the object and the
size of the electrodes. In order to attach more electrodes
to a phantom tank, we need to either reduce the size of
the electrodes or expand the area of the measurement site.
However, the area of the measurement site is invariable, and
reducing the size of the electrodes could create severe contact
impedance which limits the number of electrodes in the EIT
system.
In order to enhance the quality of the EIT image, a
high performance rotational EIT (REIT) system is developed
for expanding the independent measurements. The rotating
scheme could have advantages in several fields. In the field
of medical imaging, rotating electrodes can provide more
measurement data to improve the quality of a reconstructed
image. The process mixing applications offer an opportunity
for movement of the EIT electrodes without an extra rotating
mechanism. In general, impellers are utilized during mixing
process applications for agitation. Electrodes can be attached
to such an impeller to provide a readymade rotating host
that can be used to provide additional electrode positions.
Frounchi and Bazzazi (2003) developed a new rotating ECT
system which employed pairs of rotating electrodes, in order
to increase the number of measurements. Murphy and York
(2006) increased the number of independent EIT observations
by utilizing the rotation of a mixing impeller. In previous
works on rotating schemes, however, only a few electrodes
were implied (e.g., four electrodes) in the EIT system. In
order to further improve the spatial resolution of the EIT, we
constructed an EIT system with 16 movable electrodes. We
hope this research can provide more experience and reference
material to those who are interested in the field of rotational
EIT. The concept of movable electrodes is described in the
following section.
2. System design
In this work, a conventional EIT system is expanded to a
rotational EIT (REIT). The rotational EIT is equipped with
movable electrode pairs attached to electrodes that move to
a new measurement site so as to acquire more data. The
REIT system can be divided into three subsystems: movement
scheme, switching network and measurement system. Figure 1
shows a block diagram of a REIT system. All three subsystems
are controlled by a host computer. The movement scheme is
designed so as to obtain more independent measurements. The
movement scheme includes a phantom equipped with movable
Rotational electrical impedance tomography
Figure 1. Block diagram of a REIT system.
electrodes and a stepping motor to drive the electrodes. The
switching network is constructed from several solid-state
relays. These switches are used to change the current path
to different electrodes and to pick up the voltage measured
from each electrode. For the measurement subsystem, we
adopt a four-electrode system to measure the impedance of
the sample. The four-electrode method can eliminate the
influence of contact impedance. A constant current source
injects the fixed current (Ic) into the estimated object at a
specific frequency. The lock-in amplifier picks up the potential
(Vm), which is a response to the injecting current, and filters
out unwanted components from the measured signal.
2.1. Movement scheme and phantom design
The phantom of the REIT system is constructed from a plastic
cylinder 110 mm in height and 180 mm in diameter. There
are 16 compound electrode lines placed on the inner surface of
the plastic cylinder. Each compound electrode includes both a
voltage electrode and a current electrode. Since the electrodes
have an effect on the accuracy of measurements, it is necessary
to pay some attention to their design, especially their size and
shape (Dickin and Wang 1996, Hua et al 1993). To ensure that
a uniform current density is generated within the tank, a large
surface area is required for the current-injecting electrodes
while for the voltage electrodes a small surface area is optimal
so as to avoid the influence from other equipotentials. For
this reason, the compound electrode is constructed from one
rectangular copper slice (current electrode) and one copper bar
(voltage electrode) isolated by insulating tape. The dimensions
of the copper slice electrode are 20 mm in width, 90 mm in
high and 0.5 mm in thickness. In order to avoid overlapping
measurements, the dimensions of the copper bar are 3 mm in
width, 50 mm high and 0.5 mm in thickness. These electrode
dimensions ensure that the proposed rotational EIT can obtain
truly independent data within ten rotations. The compound
electrode applied in this study is illustrated in figure 2.
The movement scheme is the most important part in a
REIT system. The moving electrode scheme is composed of
16 compound electrodes which are fixed on a movable ring
frame. The electrodes are distributed around the inner surface
of the ring frame. Figure 3(a) shows a vertical view of the
phantom tank with an electrode array, and figure 3(b) shows
a three-dimensional view of the phantom tank. The driving
stepping motor adopted in this study is an Oriental Motor
CSK microstepping motor. The CSK Series motor consists
of a high-performance stepping motor and a compact, low
vibration microstepping driver which offers a smooth position
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C-N Huang et al

(a)

(a) (b)

Figure 2. Design of compound electrode: (a) front view and

(b) lateral view.

function. The microstepping motor combines a compact high-

torque type motor and high-resolution one, geared together to
achieve high positioning accuracy. The ring frame is driven by
a stepping-motor with a minimal rotating angle of 0.018◦ . This
means that the electrode pair measurement site can be changed
precisely. The neighborhood data acquisition procedure is
utilized. First we obtain 16 × (16 − 3)/2 = 104 independent
impedance measurements. Next, the angular orientation
of the scanning device is incremented by 1 stepping angle
(Ex. 0.018◦ ), and then another 104 impedance measurements
(second data acquisition procedure) are acquired. In this
way, by moving electrodes from the original to the next (b)
electrode location, we can increase the number of independent
Figure 3. Design of a rotational phantom: (a) vertical view of
measurements further. In a 16-electrode REIT system, there phantom tank and (b) 3D view of phantom tank.
are 16 electrodes distributed around the cylinder. The angle
between adjacent electrodes is 22.5◦ . This means that we can
repeat the data acquisition procedure by 0.018◦ increments
through an arc of 22.5◦ . In this manner, we can change the
measurement sites 22.5/0.018 = 1250 times and accumulate
104 × 1250 = 130 000 electrical impedance measurements.
These measurements are transmitted to a computer and
reconstructed as an impedance image with a mathematical
package. However, a large number of measurements can also
render the image reconstruction process difficult.
Due to concerns with practicality, in this design, the
rotating step angle chosen was 4.5◦ and the angle between
Figure 4. Detail of the scanning motions.
the adjacent electrodes 22.5◦ . To completely scan the whole
circumference of the phantom tank, the stepping motor
needed to drive the electrodes (step angle of 4.5◦ ) five times. Figure 5(b) shows the inner view of the phantom tank. The
Eventually, the total number of measurement data increased components shown in figures 5(a) and (b) were combined to
five times (104 × 5 = 520). Figure 4 shows an enlargement of assemble the rotational EIT in figure 5(c).
the region within the dotted square in figure 3. Figure 4 shows
the motion of the electrodes during the scanning procedure. 2.2. Switching networks and the measurement system
The rotational EIT was constructed as shown in figure 5.
In figure 5(a), the 16 compound electrodes attached to the In this work, we adopted the four-point method to measure
inner wall of the moving ring can be seen. A microstepping the impedance. The four-point measurement technique can
motor is also set on the moving ring to drive the electrodes. overcome many undesired effects. For each measurement,

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 Rotational electrical impedance tomography

we require two electrode pairs, i.e., the driving pair and the
receiving pair. The driving electrode pair injects the current
into the object and the receiving electrode pair measures
the boundary voltage. For four-point measurement, four
electrodes are attached to the measured sample. A current
source forces a constant current through the ends of the sample
bar. The injecting current (Ic) is constant without changing
with load impedance. A voltmeter simultaneously measures
the voltage (Vm) generated across the sample. Because
of the decrease of the contact impedance when measuring
the conductivity, the four-point measurement system can
reduce the effect of time-varying, pressure-sensitive contact
impedance (Hart et al 1988). It is necessary to provide
high output impedance and to have strong capability of noise
rejection for a constant current source (Boone and Holder
(a)
1996). A modified-floating current source was applied in this
work.
In the experimental REIT, we use a sinusoidal current
with a 20 kHz frequency to inject a constant current into the
phantom tank and then measure the resulting potentials. Since
we are not interested in the carrier, but only the amplitude
attenuation and phase shift of the injected sine wave signal,
we demodulate the carrier signal to extract the amplitude and
phase information from the measured signal. In this work,
we applied a lock-in amplifier to estimate the amplitude and
phase of the measured signal. A lock-in amplifier can act as a
narrow band-pass filter (with a pass bandwidth almost equal to
1 mHz) around the reference signal frequency (Frerichs 2000,
Min et al 2000). Thus with the lock-in amplifier, we could
recover the original signal from the measured signals that had
(b) been corrupted by external disturbances thousands of times
stronger than the signal of interest. The demodulated data
from the lock-in amplifier are sent to a computer via a data
acquisition card (NI-DAQ 6251, National Instruments) where
they are stored on a disk for further analysis.
A switching network (multiplexers) is required in a single
current source system or in those systems that share voltage
measurement circuitry between multiple electrodes such as
for the set of electrodes attached to the inner surface of the
phantom tank. The switching network, shown in figure 1,
is divided into current and voltage switches. The current
switch transmits the excitation current from the current source
to different driving pairs. The voltage switch passes the
measurement voltage from the receiving pair to the data
acquisition card. These switching networks are adopted to
achieve the four-point method to deal with the unknown
contact impedance problem.

3. The image reconstruction method

(c)
Figure 5. View of the assembled rotational EIT: (a) 16 compound
electrodes attached to the moving ring, (b) inner view of the
phantom tank and (c) rotational EIT driven by microstepping motor.
3.1. EIDORS
The Matlab package is applied to reconstruct impedance
images from the measurement data (Polydorides and Lionheart
2002). The objective of the EIDORS project (Electrical
Impedance and Diffuse Optical Reconstruction Software) was
to develop freely available software to deal with nonlinear and
ill-posed problems from boundary measurements. Nonlinear
and ill-posed problems such as electrical impedance problems
are typically approached by using a finite-element model for

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C-N Huang et al
(a)
(b)
Figure 6. FEM model: (a) for conventional EIT (16 elements in
circumference) and (b) for rotational EIT (80 elements in
circumference).
the forward calculations to obtain a unique and stable inverse
solution. The finite-element method (FEM) is well suited to
the task for general geometries and inhomogeneous materials.
The finite-element solver included in the EIDORS toolkit
can be applied to the complete electrode model to compute
approximate solutions.
3.2. Design of the FEM model
Owing to the fact that the rotational data acquisition scheme
provides additional independent measurements, a more finely
meshed experimental model can be established. A finer mesh
provides both better accuracy and greater spatial resolution.
The tank of the FEM model is illustrated in figure 6.
Figure 6(a) shows the FEM model for the conventional
EIT. There are 16 elements around the circumference of the
model. Each element indicates an electrode. In this study,
however, the REIT system rotates 16 compound electrodes
five times, which is equal to 80 electrodes attached to the
inner surface of the phantom tank. A model of the resultant
rotational configuration, including 80 elements around the
circumference, is shown in figure 6(b).
4. Experimental result
In order to assess the performance of the proposed system,
the REIT is applied to reconstruct an impedance image of a
2962
sample placed in a cylindrical tank filled with a saline solution.
The conductivity of the saline solution was 11 mS cm−1. A
copper rod with a diameter of 30 mm is put into the phantom
tank. There are 16 compound electrodes spaced at average
intervals around the circumference of the tank. Figure 7
depicts the experimental setup and an overhead view of the
REIT system.
4.1. Degree of ill-conditioning
Singular decomposition is a valuable tool in studying an
ill-posed problem. The eigenvalues indicate how well the basis
image amplitudes are defined by the data; basis images with
smaller eigenvalues are more sensitive to data noise. In order
to illustrate the degree of ill-conditioning, the singular values
of a Jacobian are plotted. Figure 8 shows the singular value of
rotational EIT and conventional EIT values. A comparison
of the results makes it clear that the values obtained with the
rotational EIT are more and greater than the singular one.
4.2. Spatial resolution
The edge response and position dependence of the
reconstructed image are plotted, and a comparison of the
spatial resolution with the conventional and rotational EIT
scheme is made. Figures 9(a) and 10(a) show the reconstructed
impedance image of a conducting cylinder obtained using
both conventional EIT and rotational EIT. A 3.5 cm diameter
conducting cylinder (copper rod) is placed 2 cm away from
the boundary electrode. The dashed lines enclose the true
locations of the objects. Figures 9(b) and 10(b) show the
cross-sections of conventional EIT and rotational EIT images.
The cross-sectional profile is measured along the line across
the sample and the center of the phantom tank. The red lines
show the profile of the impedance image and the black lines
show the true locations of the measured sample. From the
results, it is clear that the rotational EIT has a sharper edge
near the boundary electrode. This is because increasing the
number of measurements improves the spatial resolution in
the peripheral area. However, the improvement of spatial
resolution in the center of the impedance image is limited.
In order to provide a quantitative improvement of spatial
resolution, the blur radius (Br) is defined as a measure of the
resolution.


rz Az
Br = = , (1)
ro Ao
where ro and Ao are the radius and area of the original sample,
respectively; and rz and Az are the radius and area of the zone
containing half the magnitude of the reconstructed image from
a point of contrast, respectively. The blur radius in figure 9 is
1.5571 and the blur radius in figure 10 is 1.3857.
4.3. Noise distribution measurements
The noise distributions of both the measured voltages and the
reconstructed image pixels were determined by calculating the
root-mean-square noise (defined as the standard deviation) and
the signal-to-noise ratio (defined as mean/standard deviation)
(Wang et al 1994).
 Rotational electrical impedance tomography

Figure 7. Experimental setup of the REIT system.

Figure 8. Log scale of the singular Jacobian values.

The noise distribution of the measurement was calculated
over 1040 frames. It was found that the RMS of the
measurement noise was about 7 dB. The SNR of the
impedance image reconstructed from conventional EIT (fixed,
208 measurements) was 4.89 dB, and the SNR of the
impedance image reconstructed from the proposed rotational
EIT (5 rotations, 1040 measurements) was 5.55 dB. This result
shows that rotational EIT could improve the SNR image.
Increasing the angular resolution of REIT may provide
greater improvement of the image quality. However, when
we reconstructed the impedance image, the huge number of
data caused ‘out of memory’ problems even though there
was enough physical memory. This was because the total
memory space required for high angular resolution exceeded
the capability of the 32-bit application (about 2 GB). The result
was that we could not reconstruct REIT impedance images
when the electrodes rotated more than six steps.
4.4. Reconstructed impedance image
To demonstrate the improvement of resolution in a rotational
EIT system, the impedance images reconstructed from both

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C-N Huang et al

(a)
(a)

Red line : profile of impedance image

1 Black line: position of measured sample Red line : profile of impedance image
1 Black line: position of measured sample

0.8
0.8
Normalized profile

Normalized profile

0.6
0.6

0.4
0.4

0.2
0.2

0
-8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 0
position along the center line -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8
position along the center line
(b)
(b)
Figure 9. The profile of impedance image reconstructed by
conventional EIT: (a) reconstructed impedance image (red: higher Figure 10. Profile of impedance image reconstructed by rotational
conductivity; blue: lower conductivity) and (b) image profile. EIT: (a) reconstructed impedance image (red: higher conductivity;
blue: lower conductivity) and (b) image profile.

conventional EIT and REIT are compared. The phantom

tank with a metal object is illustrated in figure 11. The
impedance image reconstructed by applying the conventional
EIT measurement configuration is shown in figure 12(a). The
image reconstructed from the REIT configuration is shown in
figure 12(b). Because the REIT collected more measurement
data, the REIT system could reconstruct an image with a higher
resolution FEM model making it easier to identify the shape
and the position of a metal object in the phantom tank; see
figure 12(b).
In order to make a fair comparison between the EIT and
the REIT, the same FEM model is applied to reconstruct the
impedance image again. In this trial, the mesh model of
figure 6(b) was applied simultaneously to the EIT and REIT
images. The EIT image with higher density mesh is shown in
figure 13. It is observed that the results suffer from a serious
ill-posed problem. This is because insufficient measurement
data are applied to reconstruct the high density mesh, so the
ill-posed condition generally worsens. Figure 11. Phantom tank with metal object.

2964

(a)
(b)
Figure 12. Reconstructed images from the EIT and the REIT
systems: (a) EIT image and (b) REIT image.
Figure 13. EIT image with higher density mesh.
5. Conclusion and summary
In this study, a REIT system which could increase
measurement data is developed by the application of a
scanning motion in an EIT system. Compared with the EIT
system, the REIT offers several significant improvements.
(1) It substantially increases the number of independent
measurement data which would improve the resolution of the
impedance image and the ill-posed condition. (2) Applying
the scanning scheme can decrease the channel number of the
measurement system. This could reduce the complexity and
the cost of the EIT system. (3) The scanning scheme also
provides flexibility in terms of imaging resolution and time
consumed.
The authors have previously proposed a simple movable
EIT (MEIT) architecture (eight electrodes, small phantom)
(Chang et al 2005). In this work, the performance of the
aforementioned MEIT to achieve a high quality impedance
image has been improved. Table 1 lists the difference between
the MEIT and the REIT.
Although this approach yields sample impedance images
of higher resolution, considerable time is still required for
data accumulation. In this research, a microstepping motor
Rotational electrical impedance tomography
Table 1. Comparison of the MEIT and the rotational EIT system.
MEIT system Rotational EIT
Electrode number 8 16
Minimal step angle 7.5◦ 0.018◦
Maximum data 120 130 000
Diameter of phantom 100 mm 180 mm
Shape of electrodes Bar (small area) Flat (large area)
Type of electrodes Common electrode Compound electrode
is used to expand the measurement sites. The angle between
adjoining electrodes is 22.5◦ . The minimal stepping angle
of the microstepping motor is 0.018◦ . By applying 0.018◦
increments through an arc of 22.5◦ , we could have at most 1250
measurement sites. The speed of the microstepping motor is
set as 0.18◦ s–1 so the time for driving the electrodes to scan
all measurement sites is about 125 s. In this work, the data
acquisition time for conventional EIT (208 measurements) is
90 s. In the rotational EIT (five turns), the time for acquiring
data is 125 + 90 × 5 = 575 s (about 10 min). To shorten the
acquisition time, a parallel configuration can be used to acquire
voltages at the same time. In this way, data accumulation
time could be shortened to 1 s. The positioning of the
electrodes is important, since the reconstruction algorithm
assumes that the electrodes are located at precisely defined
intervals. The REIT utilizes a microstepping motor to locate
the position of electrodes, so the scanning motion can eliminate
the position error. The large number of measurement data
obtained from the REIT however can cause serious problems
during image reconstruction. It is necessary to develop a
fast reconstruction algorithm capable of dealing with the huge
numbers of measurement data.
Applying larger current electrodes for the EIT
measurement could eliminate the effect of contact impedance
and improve the image quality. However, when we increase
the area of the current electrodes, a near-metal boundary
is constructed. For conductive boundary measurement, the
equipotential lines would produce vanishingly small potential
differences and a large proportion of the probing current would
be shorted out of the imaged region (Record et al 1995). Even
though the current supply electrodes are not used in voltage
measurement, they still present a conductor to the perimeter
either side of the voltage sense electrode which will upset the
boundary voltages. Therefore, applying compound electrodes
will decrease electrode–skin contact impedance but it also
reduces the current density in the interior of the phantom tank.
The trade-off between sensitivity and size of the compound
electrode should be further explored. Many studies also
try to optimize the structure size of the compound electrode
(Wang et al 2001). In this paper, the width of the current
electrodes is 20 mm and the distance between two adjacent
electrodes is 10 mm. It is found that this configuration can
provide maximal boundary potential without exceeding the
input limit of the data acquisition card.
The concept of improving spatial resolution has always
been associated with the modification of electrodes. Pinheiro
et al (1998) suggested the idea that, to increase the resolution,
the driving electrodes should have a large contact surface,
while the measurement electrodes should be as small as
possible. The concept of compound electrodes was introduced
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C-N Huang et al
by Hua et al (1993), who noted that the injection of
currents and the measurement of voltages could be carried
out through different compartments of the same electrode.
Those improvements in spatial resolution have been limited.
Increasing the number of electrodes is the most significant
way to improve spatial resolution. However, Polydorides
and McCann (2002) concluded that increasing the number
of electrodes is a rather inefficient option, as the improvement
in the spatial resolution of the image is obtained at the cost
of more sophisticated and expensive hardware, slower data
acquisition cycles, and higher computational workload.
The method of rotational electrical impedance tomog-
raphy proposed in this paper is simply a modification of the
present fixed electrode system designed to improve impedance
performance. For hardware assembly, the electrodes are
attached to a ring driven by a microstepping motor. In the
reconstruction algorithm, the rotational electrical impedance
tomography is treated as an extended electrode system.
In adapting the current EIT system, we can collect more
measurement data for image reconstruction, without
constructing a more complicated hardware system. It is
believed that this primary work can attract more researchers to
put more effort into this field.
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