Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) for Manufacturing Technology in Industry 4.0: The Possibilities and Challenges

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a computerized tomographic (CT) technique which provides a cross-sectional image of an object under test in terms of its electrical impedance distribution. In EIT an array of surface electrodes with an electronic instrumentation is used to collect the boundary voltage current data by conducting complete scanning with electrical current or voltage signal similar to the X-Ray beam scanning done in X-Ray CT. Spatial distribution of electrical impedance is reconstructed from the measured boundary data using a computer program called image reconstruction algorithm. As a non-invasive radiation free tomographic imaging modality EIT finds a lot of applications in several practical problems in engineering and technology. In industrial engineering, material products are possible to assess using EIT and hence a number of manufacturing problems are studied using EIT. The present paper presents a brief review of the application of EIT in manufacturing technology and summarizes its possibilities and challenges followed by recent trends in industry 4.0.