AN IMAGE-ENHANCEMENT TECHNIQUE FOR ELECTRICAL-IMPEDANCE TOMOGRAPHY

In this paper, we propose an idea for reconstructing 'blocky' conducti vity profiles in electrical impedance tomography. By 'blocky' profiles , we mean functions that are piecewise constant, and hence have sharpl y defined edges. The method is based on selecting a conductivity distr ibution that has the least total variation from all conductivities tha t are consistent with the measured data. We provide some motivation fo r this approach and formulate a computationally feasible problem for t he linearized version of the impedance tomography problem. A simple gr adient descent-type minimization algorithm, closely related to recent work on noise and blur removal in image processing via non-linear diff usion is described. The potential of the method is demonstrated in sev eral numerical experiments.