Comparison of algorithms for non-linear inverse 3D electrical tomography reconstruction

Non-linear electrical impedance tomography reconstruction algorithms usually employ the Newton-Raphson iteration scheme to image the conductivity distribution inside the body. For complex 3D problems, the application of this method is not feasible any more due to the large matrices involved and their high storage requirements. In this paper we demonstrate the suitability of an alternative conjugate gradient reconstruction algorithm for 3D tomographic imaging incorporating adaptive mesh refinement and requiring less storage space than the Newton-Raphson scheme. We compare the reconstruction efficiency of both algorithms for a simple 3D head model. The results show that an increase in speed of about 30% is achievable with the conjugate gradient-based method without loss of accuracy.