238

R Reinaldo / Study of Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography Depth Detection Capability

and Its Imaging Quality Evaluation

Study of Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography Depth Detection

Capability and Its Imaging Quality Evaluation
R Reinaldo1, M R Baidillah2, Warsito Purwo Taruno2, Agus Setyo Budi1
1

Department Of Physics, Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Jakarta Timur, Indonesia

CTECH Labs Edwar Technology. Co, Alam Sutera, Tanggerang, Indonesia
rifkyreynaldo@gmail.com

Abstrak Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography (PMIT) merupakan sebuah pengembangan mutakhir sistem
pencitraan Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT). PMIT pada dasarnya dikembangkan untuk mengatasi permasalahan
pencitraan bahan konduktif yang mana pengukuran hanya dapat dilakukan pada salah satu permukaan bahan.
Konfigurasi desain planar yang dimiliki PMIT menjadikannya sangat cocok untuk diterapkan pada bidang-bidang
aplikasi seperti pengujian tak-merusak (NDT) dan Geofisika. Hasil riset terbaru memperlihatkan bahwa sistem PMIT
memiliki kelemahan dalam hal mencitrakan objek yang berada pada kedalaman tertentu dari permukaan sensor sistem.
Namun demikian, akan lebih baik apabila hal ini dapat dinyatakan secara kuantitatif, sehingga kelemahan tersebut
dapat terukur dan terjelaskan dengan baik. Dalam makalah ini, akan didemonstrasikan simulasi pengujian kemampuan
deteksi kedalaman sistem PMIT serta evaluasi kualitas hasil pencitraan yang didapat secara kuantitatif menggunakan
beberapa teknik pemrosesan citra digital.
Kata kunci: magnetic induction tomography, planar, sensor, pengujian tak-merusak, pemrosesan citra digital
Abstract Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography (PMIT) is an emerging development of Magnetic Induction
Tomography (MIT) imaging system that is developed to overcome imaging process restriction that the measurements can
only be taken from one surface of conductive materials under testing. The planar design configuration makes it quite
attractive to be applied in fields such as Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) and Geophysics. The recent study shows that
PMIT has a weakness in terms of detecting object that is located at a particular distance from the sensor. However, it
would be better if it can be represented quantitatively, so the weakness can be measured and well explained. In this
paper, simulation of a PMIT system is demonstrated to test its depth detection capability and its imaging quality is also
evaluated quantitatively using several digital image processing techniques.
Key words: magnetic induction tomography, planar, sensor, non-destructive testing, digital image processing

I. INTRODUCTION
Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography (PMIT) is an
emerging development of Magnetic Induction
Tomography (MIT) [1] imaging system that is developed
to overcome imaging process restriction that the
measurements can only be taken from one surface of
materials under testing [2-3]. The planar configuration of
PMIT makes it quite attractive to be applied in NonDestructive Testing (NDT) and Geophysics, besides its
contact-less and non-invasive features [4]. The most
recent study of PMIT is the one that carried out by
Soleimani et all [5]. According to the results, PMIT has
an unsatisfactory performance because of its week depth
detection capability. It means, for objects under testing
that are located at a particular distance from the sensor,
the image that its produce can experience quality
degradation. In specific, this occurs when the objects are
not located in the sensitive region of the sensor.
Soleimani et all discovered that the maximum
detectability depth of PMIT is less than 5 cm. This
disadvantage definitely can reduce the potential of PMIT
to be applied for instance in geophysics to detect metallic
objects that far away bellow the ground surface.
However, from a fundamental point of view, no matter
how week the system capability, it should always be

represented quantitatively. Therefore, the weakness can

be measured and well explained.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The simulated PMIT system used in the perfect study
consists of 16 identical and equally spaced transmittersensor coils that are arranged in 4 4 matrix as can be
seen in Figure 1(a) and Figure 1(b) for the coil sequence.
Each coil is designed has 3.9 cm inner diameter, 4.1 cm
outer diameter, 3.4 cm length and 100 numbers of turns.
These parameters are chosen based on what can be found
on the literature [5]. Each of these16 coils is driven
individually with harmonic signal of 1A current, 50 KHz.
According to sensitivity model theory [6], for a 16channels system, total number of induced voltage
measurements will be (16 15)/2 = 120.

(a)
Figure 1. (a) Coil Array. (b) Coil Sequence.

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(b)

R Reinaldo / Study of Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography Depth Detection Capability

and Its Imaging Quality Evaluation

III. METHODOLOGIES
A. Forward Model
Forward problem of MIT is an eddy current problem
that can be derived mathematically from Maxwells
equation for quasi-static approximation [7]. This
derivation can be written in terms of the magnetic vector
potential, A for the harmonic excitation cases using
complex phasor notation as:
(1)
Where is magnetic permeability, is electrical
conductivity, and Js is driving current density applied at
an excitation coil. If the total current at an excitation coil
is 1A, the sensitivity map also known as the Sensitivity
matrix can be defined as [8]:

239

iterative regularized manner [6]. The algorithm procedure

of the technique is given by:
(3)
Where x is the reconstructed parameter vector, S is the
systems sensitivity matrix, V is the measurement vector,
and is the regularization parameter. Actually, in this
algorithm we are free to choose whatever value for the
number of iteration and regularization parameter.
However, in this occasion we find the parameter value
and the number of iteration based on the smallest image
error and the fastest convergence rate criteria that can be
seen on Figure 3.

(2)
Where Vij is the measured voltage for i-j coil pair, k is
the conductivity of k-th voxel, k is the volume of k-th
voxel, Ai and Aj are respectively solutions of the forward
problem when the excitation coil i is excited with 1A
current and sensing coil j is excited with unit current. The
number of voxels in this simulation is chosen to be
32x32x32. Figure 2 shows the Sensitivity map coupling
for several coil pairs in the simulated system.

(a)

(b)

Figure 3. Convergence plot of Iterative Linear Back-Projection

Algorithm in this simulation.

C. Image Quality Measures

The imaging quality of the system in this simulation is
evaluated by measuring several image quality parameters
that had been already proposed and used by Adler et all
and Soleimani et all [9-10]. These parameters are
resolution (RES), positioning error (PE), and shape
deformation (SD). Procedure that is used to implement
this method, as follow: the chosen layer of the
reconstructed image first is converted to a binary image
that is defined as:
(4)
Where [.] is the truth statement that will give 1 if the
condition is satisfied, else 0. RES is defined as:
(5)

(c)

(d)

Figure 2. Sensitivity map coupling for coil pair (a) 1-3, (b) 116, (c) 4-13, and (d) 4-16 in the simulated system.

B. Inverse Solver
To solve inverse problem of the system, in this
simulation we use a well-known inverse technique that is
widely used in electrical tomography cases, that is
Lanbewer algorithm which is also known as Iterative
Linear Back-Projection technique. It is noted that, inverse
problem in electrical tomography systems are mainly illposed. Therefore, it will need a regularization. The
Iterative Linear Back-Projection technique aims to find
the minimum least square error of a function through an

Where A0 is the pixel area of true conductivity

distribution. RES value should be close to 1 in order for
the algorithm correctly represents true area of the
distribution. In this occasion, we define our own
formulation to calculate SD as:
(6)
Where C is the boundary region of A0. So, the first term
in (6) means the total pixel amplitude of b outside C. The
value of SD should be close to 0, which shows there is no
degradation in the reconstructed shape. PE measures the
extent to which a reconstructed image faithfully
represents the position of the image target based on the
Center of Mass (CoM) of both images [9].

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240

R Reinaldo / Study of Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography Depth Detection Capability

and Its Imaging Quality Evaluation

Inclusion depth

Experiment setup

Sliced true image

Sliced reconstructed image

1 cm

2 cm

3 cm

4 cm

5 cm

Figure 4. Depth detection capability imaging test setup and result.

Table 1. Imaging quality evaluation result.

Inclusion depth (cm)
1
2
3
4
5

Image
True
Reconstructed
True
Reconstructed
True
Reconstructed
True
Reconstructed
True
Reconstructed

RES
1.00
1.38
1.00
1.22
1.00
1.30
1.00
0.92
1.00
0.91

RES error (%)

0.00
27.45
0.00
18.35
0.00
23.30
0.00
8.47
0.00
10.10

CoM (x,y)
(16.50, 16.50)
(16.50,16.50)
(16.50, 16.50)
(16.50, 16.50)
(16.50, 16.50)
(16.50, 16.74)
(16.50, 16.50)
(16.50, 24.30)
(16.50, 16.50)
(20.58, 16.09)

PE error (%)
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
1.00
0.00
29.77
0.00
16.57

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SD (%)
0.00
3.66
0.00
17.15
0.00
16.34
0.00
58.17
0.00
95.65

R Reinaldo / Study of Planar Magnetic Induction Tomography Depth Detection Capability

and Its Imaging Quality Evaluation

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Several simulation experiments were conducted to test
depth detection capability of the PMIT system. Five
experiments were conducted and the setup can be seen in
the second column of Figure 4. The system is tested to
detect two identic inclusions that are steel cube with the
side length of 3 cm, electrical conductivity of 4.02106
S/m, and relative permittivity and permeability of 1. The
depth of the inclusions to the coil array are varied for
each simulation, which are 1,25 cm. Third and fourth
column in Figure 4 are respectively sliced true and
reconstructed images of the inclusions.
It can be seen that reconstructed images for the depth
cases 1, 2 and 3 cm give satisfactory results. These
images are correctly represent where the inclusions are
located. However, for the depth cases of 4 and 5 cm, the
results are in contras. Table 1 shows the imaging quality
evaluation result for each depth variation. It can be
inferred from the result that the greater the depth of the
inclusions, the larger the PE and SD that occurs in the
reconstructed images. For the depth cases of 4 and 5 cm,
the PE and SD are greater compared to the others, which
means the reconstructed images are not capable anymore
to correctly represent the inclusions. These give us an
intuition that the system capability to maintain its
imaging performance degrades when detecting inclusions
that depth are greater than the maximum of the system
can reach, in this case, 3 cm. According to literature,
what can affect the depth detection capability of PMIT is
not the image reconstruction algorithm or the number of
inclusions. PMIT system detectability depends on its
sensitivity and location of the inclusion(s). It had been
discovered that the sensitive region of PMIT tends to
have a trapezoidal or spherical shape [2]. Working
frequency of 50 KHz also made the system obtained less
information about the inclusion, because the eddy current
can only penetrate 0.112 cm. In every experiment, the
skin effect is not neglected. Therefore, it is clear that the
larger the depth, the less the information can be obtained
from the inclusions.

1st World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography,

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IV. CONCLUSION
This study has shown the depth detection capability of
PMIT system and evaluation of its imaging quality. The
depth detectability performance of the system is highly
depending on its sensitivity and the location of the
object(s) under testing. The farther the object(s) from the
system sensitive region, the lower the quality of the
reconstructed image that will be produced. How good or
bad the imaging quality can be measured quantitatively
through evaluating several image quality parameters.
Nevertheless, further development has to be concerned
about how to increase the sensitivity range of the system,
so its maximum detectability depth can be enhanced.
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