Voltage-based separation of respiration and cardiac activity by harmonic analysis in electrical impedance tomography

This study aims to improve the accuracy of Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) measurements for monitoring ventilation and cardiac signal in medical imaging by proposing a new signal separation approach that does not require contrast agents. Conventionally, contrast agents like high-conductive saline solutions are used for signal separation in EIT measurements. This study uses a harmonic analysis on EIT raw voltage data to separate the ventilation- and cardiac-related signals (early separation). It evaluates its efficacy with a simulation model at low (1%) and high (10%) superimposed additive noise levels against the already published harmonic analysis at pixel level after EIT image reconstruction (late separation). The findings indicate that the voltage-based harmonic analysis approach, i.e., early separation, provides reliable signal separation, especially under high noise conditions, compared to the late separation. This method enables the possibility of incorporating independent cardiac-specific or ventilation-specific prior knowledge into the image reconstruction process, potentially improving the resulting images.