title: Contrast enhancement in EIT imaging of the brain.
abstract: We consider electrical impedance tomography (EIT) imaging of the brain. The brain is surrounded by the poorly conducting skull which has low conductivity compared to the brain. The skull layer causes a partial shielding effect which leads to weak sensitivity for the imaging of the brain tissue. In this paper we propose an approach based on the Bayesian approximation error approach, to enhance the contrast in brain imaging. With this approach, both the (uninteresting) geometry and the conductivity of the skull are embedded in the approximation error statistics, which leads to a computationally efficient algorithm that is able to detect features such as internal haemorrhage with significantly increased sensitivity and specificity. We evaluate the approach with simulations and phantom data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, University of Eastern Finland, PO Box 1627, FIN-70211 Kuopio, Finland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nissinen
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Kaipio
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vauhkonen
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kolehmainen
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D001921:Brain; D017097:Electric Impedance; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D015233:Models, Statistical; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D012886:Skull; D014054:Tomography / Q000379:methods*