Electrical impedance tomography by finite elements using parameterisation of material structure

The majority of present tomographic reconstruction techniques are either computationally intensive or geometry-specific. In some materials-forming processes the internal structure is characterised by several regions of distinct electrical properties, and only the interface positions are unknown. The authors propose an algorithm which uses this knowledge to reduce significantly the number of degrees of freedom in the problem, thereby making possible the iterative use of the finite element method in an updating scheme for a real-time online manufacturing control tool. The authors present preliminary results which show that it can be effective in identifying exactly the location and size of simple features in a two-phase material.