Perturbative approach to compute sensitivity matrix elements in electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) of flow systems

We describe an efficient way to compute the sensitivity matrix for electrical capacitance tomography (ECT). The sensitivity matrix is used in conjunction with a neural-network based multi-criterion optimization image reconstruction technique (NN-MOIRT) designed for 3D realtime imaging of three-phase flow systems. We adopt a perturbative approach for the calculation of the sensitivity matrix for very small pixel sizes (higher resolutions). This approach can reduce the sensitivity matrix fill time by up to two orders of magnitude in this kind of problem, when compared to traditional methods such as FEM.