A Thorax-Like Mesh Phantom for Testing Electrical Impedance Tomography System Performance

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive and radiation-free clinical imaging technology, which is considered to be an effective substitute for CT and MRI. Assessing the performance of EIT requires a phantom for validation, calibration, and comparison. In this paper, we present a thorax-like mesh phantom that can effectively simulate the distribution of human thorax conductivity and optimize the mesh by reducing the number of resistors and exploring the optimal electrode placement. The proposed optimization methods are verified by Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) simulation and Electrical Impedance Tomography and Diffuse Optical Tomography Reconstruction Software (EIDORS) image reconstruction. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed thorax-like mesh phantom gets a high image correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.680 with only 313 resistors. Our proposed thorax-like mesh phantom can be used for EIT system validation and further promote the research of EIT system.