A Path Integral Monte Carlo Method based on Feynman-Kac Formula for Electrical Impedance Tomography

Abstract

A path integral Monte Carlo method (PIMC) based on Feynman-Kac formula for mixed boundary conditions of elliptic equations is proposed to solve the forward problem of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) on the boundary to obtain electrical potentials. The forward problem is an important part for iterative algorithms of the inverse problem of EIT, which has attracted continual interest due to its applications in medical imaging and material testing of materials. By simulating reflecting Brownian motion with walk-on-sphere techniques and calculating its corresponding local time, we are able to obtain accurate voltage-to-current map for the conductivity equation with mixed boundary conditions for a 3-D spherical object with eight electrodes. Due to the local property of the PIMC method, the solution of the map can be done locally for each electrode in a parallel manner.