Absolute Reconstructions Using Rotational Electrical Impedance Tomography for Breast Cancer Imaging

A rotational Electrical Impedance Tomography (rEIT) methodology is described and shown to produce spatially accurate absolute reconstructions with improved image contrast and an improved ability to distinguish closely spaced inclusions compared to traditional EIT on data recorded from cylindrical and breast-shaped tanks. Rotations of the tank without altering the interior conductivity distribution are used to produce the rEIT data. Quantitatively, rEIT was able to distinguish two inclusions that were 1.5 cm closer together than traditional EIT could achieve for inclusions placed 2 to 3 cm from the center for the cylindrical tank, and rEIT was able to distinguish two tumor-like inclusions where traditional EIT could not reliably do so. Mathematical analysis showed that rEIT improves the number of stable singular vectors by up to 4.2 and 4.7 times than that of traditional EIT for the cylindrical and breast-shaped tanks, respectively, which is an indication of improved resolution. Direct investigations into measurements revealed minimum rotation angles that should yield data uncorrupted by noise. Two inverse approaches (one that inverts then fuses the data (I/DF) and one that fuses the data then inverts (DF/I)) and two mesh modeling approaches were considered. It was found that DF/I produces far better results compared to I/DF and a rotated-mesh approach produces further improvements. The ability to obtain improved absolute reconstructions using rEIT on a practical clinical scenario (breast-shaped tank experiment) is an important step towards using rEIT to improve previous EIT results in medical applications.