Image reconstruction based on a modified bird swarm optimization algorithm for electrical impedance tomography

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a potential and promising tomographic technique. It is known that image reconstruction of EIT is mathematically an ill-posed inverse problem that leads to poor reconstruction quality. To improve the quality of reconstructed images, a novel image reconstruction method based on modified bird swarm optimization algorithm is proposed in this paper. An image of conductivity distribution acquired by Newton's one-step error reconstruction algorithm performs as initial population. Then a modified bird swarm optimization algorithm is proposed to optimize the initial conductivity distribution. By introducing a dynamic inertia weight parameter, flight interval of the bird swarm varies with the number of iterations. With the proposed method, a strong global search capability in the initial stage and a strong local search capability in the later stage are ensured during the optimization. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, simulation work and experimental validation are carried out. Also, reconstructed images are compared with the results obtained by iterative Landweber method and Newton-Raphson method. Meanwhile, the impact of noise on the reconstruction is investigated. The simulation and experimental results have demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed method in visualizing conductivity distribution.