Image and Velocity Profile Reconstruction Using a Customized 8–16 Electrode Electrical Capacitance Tomography Sensor Based on LabVIEW Simulation

Electrical Capacitance Tomography is a method for determining the dielectric permittivity distribution inside an object from the measurement of the external capacitances of a multi-electrode assembly. The measuring electrodes, which are metal plates, must be large enough to give a measurable change in capacitance. In this article, the performance of the ECT sensor, the sensitivity matrix, and hence the reconstructed image quality and the velocity profiles are improved. A typical customized 16–8 electrode ECT sensor is proposed, simulated, and implemented on the LabVIEW platform in contrast with a set of standard 8, 12, and 16-electrode ECT sensors. The results of these types of sensors are noted and compared to each other, focusing on the customized sensor. It is observed from the results obtained during this simulation experiment that the performance of the customized 16–8 electrode ECT sensor is comparatively better and exhibits better quality and performance with respect to its image and velocity reconstruction. The comparison of results further demonstrated that the correlation coefficient changes from 0.61 to 0.96, and the error images are within 0.3 to 0.1 for the SNRs going from 60 to 90 dB. It was also observed that the reconstructed velocity profiles are consistent with the original expected velocity profiles for the customized 8–16-electrode ECT sensor.