Study of Graphics Libraries Related to the Problem of Visualization of Electrical Impedance Tomography Images

Abstract

The structure of the software for electric impedance tomography has been presented. This structure of application construction makes it possible to carry out the real-time EIT research and can be implemented on medical and technical devices, in particular, integrated into AVL devices. The algorithm for visualization of the results of conductivity field reconstruction was presented. Within this algorithm, there are two approaches to presenting color models and selecting colors for each particular finite element. The choice of one of these approaches depends on the needs of the study and leads either to faster performance, or to the higher quality of an image. The algorithm of neighboring finite elements, allowing reducing the time consumed to visualize the model by uniting neighboring elements with a similar color in one polygon, has been proposed. Reducing the number of finite elements leads to a higher speed of their output on the screen. A list of graphics libraries that can be used for the problems of visualization of the results of electric impedance tomography was presented. As a result of the research, it was found that among the analyzed libraries, the best time is demonstrated by the OpenGL library, which ensures the visualization of 0.02 s faster than in the case of the analogs. This is due to the high operation speed, which is provided by the implementation of the GPU visualization. It was shown that the use of the proposed algorithm of neighboring finite elements actually allows reducing the time spent on displaying the model on the screen from 0.05 s to 0.03 s for the OpenGL library. At the same time, the total time spent on visualization depends on the used graphics library. The obtained data can be used in the development of medical visualization systems, which should meet increased requirements in terms of the amount of displayed information