Magnetic induction tomography guided electrical capacitance tomography imaging with grounded conductors

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is an imaging technique commonly used for imaging dielectric permittivity of insulating objects. In applications such industrial process tomography and non-destructive testing (NDT), the objects under test may exhibit variations in both dielectric permittivity and electrical conductivity. In particular, a sample that includes high conductivity, such as metal, can cause a large change in electrical field in ECT. The metal sample in imaging area will cause a large change in the sensitivity map of ECT compared to free space, which will make the ECT image reconstruction inaccurate. This effect is more severe in grounded conductor than floating conductors, so this paper focuses on grounded conductor. In order to update the sensitivity map, one needs to gain information about the conductivity distribution in ECT problem. Magnetic induction tomography (MIT) is sensitive to electrical conductivity and not sensitive to permittivity variations; therefore, it can be used to visualize the conductivity distribution of the target under test. In this paper, a dual-modality MIT and ECT system is proposed to image a medium including conductors and dielectrics. Both simulated and experimental results are presented, which demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.