Magnetic induction tomography: The influence of the coil configuration on the spatial resolution

Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT) is a low-resolution and contact-less imaging modality for mapping the electrical properties inside a region of interest. For an imaging system it is necessary to give forecasts about the quality of an image. This paper is dedicated to investigate the resolution and location of a inhomogeneity subject to the number and to the location of the used excitation coils and receiving coils around the region of interest. To this end the Point-Spread-Function (PSF) was calculated for different coil configurations and with 40 dB signal-to-noise ratio. In analogy to EIT the PSF depends on the location and shows the broadest distribution in the centre of the object. The results show that the resolution depends on the used coil configuration especially the location of the coils with respect to each other and increases, when moving from the centre towards the border of the object.