Process tomography

Overview

Process tomography consists of tomographic imaging of systems, such as process pipes in industry. In tomography the three dimensional distribution of some physical quantity in the object is determined. There is a widespread need to get tomographic information about process. This information can be used e.g. in design and control of processes. Many different imaging methods are used in process tomography, e.g. ultrasonic imaging, positron emission tomography (PET) and electrical impedance tomography (EIT). In all cases external sensors are used to detect signals from boundary of the object, and the three dimensional material distribution or the velocity field is computed using the measured data. In our research we use EIT imaging in process tomography.

Schematic figure of EIT application in process tomography. The electrodes are placed on the surface of the pipe and alternating current is applied to the electrodes. The reconstruction is computed based on the voltage data. The reconstructed image presents two dimensional slice of the three dimensional conductivity distribution.