Finite Element Optimizations for Efficient Non-Linear Electrical Tomography Reconstruction

M Molinari, H Fangohr, J Generowicz, SJ Cox

Department of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton

Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK sc@ecs.soton.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

Electrical Tomography can produce accurate results only if the underlying 2D or 3D volume discretization is chosen suitably for the applied numerical algorithm. We give general indications where and how to optimize a finite element discretization of a volume under investigation to enable efficient computation of potential distributions and the reconstruction of materials. For this, we present an error estimator and material-gradient indicator as a driver for adaptive mesh refinement and show how finite element mesh properties affect the efficiency and accuracy of the solutions.

Keywords 2D/3D Finite Element Method, mesh quality, adaptive meshing, optimal finite element meshes, 3D visualisation