Toward Morphological Thoracic EIT: Major Signal Sources Correspond to Respective Organ Locations in CT

Lung and cardiovascular monitoring applications of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) require localization of relevant functional structures or organs of interest within the reconstructed images. We describe an algorithm for automatic detection of heart and lung regions in a time series of EIT images. Using EIT reconstruction based on anatomical models, candidate regions are identified in the frequency domain and image-based classification techniques applied. The algorithm was validated on a set of simultaneously recorded EIT and CT data in pigs. In all cases, identified regions in EIT images corresponded to those manually segmented in the matched CT image. Results demonstrate the ability of EIT technology to reconstruct relevant impedance changes at their anatomical locations, provided that information about the thoracic boundary shape (and electrode positions) are used for reconstruction.