Optimization of Electrode Positions in Electrical Impedance Tomography

This paper introduces the optimization of electrode placement in electrical impedance tomography modeling. Precise impedance reconstruction requires accurate, well-correlated physical and numerical finite element method (FEM) models; thus, we employed the Nelder-Mead algorithm and a complete electrode model to evaluate the electrode misplacement. The electrode placement error is defined by their absolute angle from the originally equidistantly spaced initial positions. The optimization process was designed to calculate the parameters of the numerical model before launching the image reconstruction. The models were verified via simulation and experimental measurement with single source current pattern. The impact of the optimization electrodes configuration was reflected in the applied image reconstruction process, where the imprecise placement of the 6th electrode was successfully optimized with adjacent driving; the conductivity error dropped by 12.69%. The designed optimization process proved to be suitable for correlating the numerical and the physical models, and it also enabled us to eliminate imaging uncertainties and artifacts.