Developments and improvements in the solution of the forward problem in capacitance and impedance tomography

An improved computationally efficient means of determining the capacitance matrix from the finite element representation of a capacitance tomography system is shown. This direct method is also applied to the analysis of impedance tomography for systems in which there exists either an insulating boundary or a conducting boundary. The paper discusses aspects of the direct solution method which can influence the solution time and accuracy, and the application of multi-frontal solution techniques, to enhance solution times on scalable parallel computing hardware.