Image reconstruction using simulated annealing in electrical impedance tomography: a new approach

Image reconstruction in electrical impedance tomography (EIT) deals with an ill-posed and non-linear inverse problem. It has the objective of minimizing the difference between simulated (virtual) object data and electric voltage measurements performed on a non-simulated (real) object. In this paper, a new approach to the simulated annealing method applied to the reconstruction of EIT images is described. The main advantage of this approach is that all conductivity parameters are updated simultaneously. Most methods that employ simulated annealing to the problem of EIT usually evaluate each conductivity parameter individually resulting in high computational cost. The algorithm was tested both with computationally generated data and with measurements performed on a physical tank. In both cases, the method was able to make data inversion, determining the position, the dimensions and the conductivity of materials in an opaque object plane.