Reconstruction of Electrical Impedance

Tomography Using Fish School Search, Non-

Blind Search and Genetic Algorithm
Valter A. F. Barbosa a,*, Reiga R. Ribeiro a, Allan R. S. Feitosa a,
Victor L. B. A. Silva b, Arthur D. D. Rocha b, Rafaela C. Freitas b,
Ricardo E. Souza a, Wellington P. Santos a,b
a
Departamento de Engenharia Biomédica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Cidade
Universitária, Recife, PE, 50670-901, Brazil
b
Escola Politécnica da Universidade de Pernambuco, POLI-UPE, Madalena, Recife, PE,
50720-001, Brazil

ABSTRACT

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a noninvasive imaging technique that does not use
ionizing radiation, with application both in environmental sciences and in health. Image
reconstruction is performed by solving an inverse problem and ill-posed. Evolutionary
Computation and Swarm Intelligence have become a source of methods for solving inverse
problems. Fish School Search (FSS) is a promising search and optimization method, based on the
dynamics of schools of fish. In this article we present a method for reconstruction of EIT images
based on FSS and Non-Blind Search (NBS). The method was evaluated using numerical phantoms
consisting of electrical conductivity images with subjects in the center, between the center and the
edge and on the edge of a circular section, with meshes of 415 finite elements. We performed 20
simulations for each configuration. Results showed that both FSS and FSS-NBS were able to
converge faster than genetic algorithms.

Keywords: Electrical Tomography Impedance, image reconstruction, reconstruction algorithm,

fish school search, non-blind search, genetic algorithm

INTRODUCTION

Ionizing radiation is commonly used in medical image machines, as mammography, positron

emission tomography or x-rays. Besides the benefits that using those electromagnetic waves may
provide, there are many associated risks to whom operates those machines or is submitted to these
kind of exams. Also, the prolonged exposition to ionizing radiation may cause many diseases, such
as cancer (Rolnik & Seleghim Jr, 2006). Possibly, this issue is one of the most debated subjects in
Public Health all over the world, strengthening the search for imaging technologies that are:
efficient, low-cost, simple and safe to those that uses them.
A promising imaging technique, that does not use ionizing radiation, is Electric Impedance
Tomography (EIT) (Bera & Nagaraju, 2014; Rolnik & Seleghim Jr, 2006). EIT is about a non-
invasive technique that builds images of an interior body (or any object), using electrical
properties, measured over the surface of interest. Those measurements are acquired from
electrodes’ disposition around the transversal section of interest, and the application of a low
amplitude and high frequency current through them creates an electric potential, known as ”border
potential”. This low-voltage signal is measured and, in a computer, they are used in a
reconstruction algorithm that rebuilds the image of the body’s inside region of interest (Rasteiro,
Silva, Garcia, & Faia, 2011; Tehrani, Jin, McEwan, & van Schaik, 2010; Brown, Barber, & Seagar,
1985).
In medical sciences, EIT can be applied in several situations, such as: breast cancer (Cherepenin
et al., 2001), pulmonary ventilation monitoring (Alves, Amato, Terra,Vargas, & Caruso, 2014), in
the detection of pulmonary embolism or blood clots in the lungs (Cheney, Isaacson, & Newell,
1999). Likewise, it can be applied in fields as Botanics, generating images of the trees’ trunks’
insides, allowing the knowledge of its biological conditions without damaging it (Filipowicz &
Rymarczyk, 2012); in monitoring multiphasic outflow in pipes (Rolnik & Seleghim Jr, 2006); in
Geophysics, EIT is largely used to find underground storage of mineral and different geological
formations (Cheney et al., 1999).
When compared with techniques, like Magnetic Resonance Tomography, or X-Ray
Tomography, EIT has a relatively low cost, since, in simple manners, it needs an equipment able
to generate and measure current and electric potential, and a computer, able to rebuild the image
(Tehrani et al., 2010). Also, since it uses only the electrical properties (conductivity and
permittivity) of the body, there are no associated risk to its use, unlike acquisition methods that
uses ionizing radiation.
However, Electric Impedance Tomography images have, still, low resolution and undefined
borders, which harms its popularity and diffusion among the imaging field. This motivates
researchers of EIT to seek new methods of image reconstruction that are also able to overcome
these techniques disabilities, creating images with good resolution and low computational cost,
making of it a reliable and easy tool on diseases’ diagnostics.
Mathematically, EIT reconstruction problem is known as ill-posed and ill-conditioned, meaning
that there are not only one solution (image) for a given potential border distribution. Many
algorithms are applied in order to solve EIT problem, and, however, the image generated is not
totally reliable or well defined (Rolnik & Seleghim Jr, 2006).
Thus, an alternative way used in the attempt of solving the EIT problem is managing it as an
optimization problem, which the objective is minimize the relative error between the measured
border potential of an object and the calculated border potential of the solution candidate (Feitosa,
Ribeiro, Barbosa, de Souza, & dos Santos, 2014; Ribeiro, Feitosa, de Souza, & dos Santos, 2014a,
2014b, 2014c).
A heuristic that may be used in order to solve this as an optimization problem is the Fish School
Search (FSS) (Bastos-Filho, de Lima Neto, Lins, Nascimento, & Lima, 2008; Bastos-Filho &
Guimarães, 2015). This technique is inspired in fish schools’ behavior on food search. The search
process on FSS is made by a population which its individuals (the fishes) has a limited memory.
Each school represents a possible solution for the system. The fishes interact among each other
and with the environment that surrounds them, and, by influence of the collective and individual
movement’s operator and food operator, the school increases the possibility of convergence to the
food surroundings, which means the best position and solution to that problem (Lins, Bastos-Filho,
Nascimento, Junior, & de Lima-Neto, 2012).
 In this work, a relatively simple approach to image reconstruction problem of EIT is proposed,
using Fish School Search (FSS). However, it was modified, presenting two ways of solution
candidates (fish) initialization: one completely random and other, among the random candidates,
one solution derived from the Gauss-Newton reconstruction method. Taking into account Saha
and Bandyopadhyay (2008) this initialization method was called Non-Blind Search.
This work is organized as following. In section Materials and Methods we present a brief on
the theoretical foundations of Electrical Impedance Tomography and inverse problems, Fish
School Search, Non-Blind Search, the experimental infrastructure, and our proposal. In section
Results and Discussion we present experimental results and detailed discussion. Finally, in section
Conclusion we present conclusions and some highlights of future developments.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Electrical Impedance Tomography: Mathematical Formulation And Reconstruction

Problems

In EIT the estimate of the electrical conductivity distribution, inside a heterogeneous body or
object, is made by the resolution of a partial differential equation named Poisson’s Equation
(Borcea, 2002; Cheney et al., 1999). The process to obtain the Poisson’s Equation is originated
from the Maxwell’s Equations, it is starting from the Gauss’s law in point form (Tombe, 2012):

D   (1)

Where   is the divergent operator,  is the free electric charge in the interest region, and
D is the electric elasticity given by the multiplication of the electrical conductive distribution
 (u ) in the point u = ( x, y, z ) and the Electrical field E , as a follow:

D =  (u ) E (2)

Knowing that the electrical field E is determined by the negative gradient (denoted by the
nabla symbol -  ) of the electrical potentials (  (u ) ), we have that:

E =   (u ) (3)

In the reconstruction problem of EIT images we consider that there is no free electric charge in
the interest region (i.e.  = 0 ). Taking that into account and replacing the Equations (2) and (3)
in (1) we get the Poisson’s Equation (Borcea, 2002; Cheney et al., 1999) as given below:

   [ (u ) (u )] = 0 (4)

Besides, we also need to consider the following boundary conditions (Borcea, 2002):
 ext (u) =  (u), u   (5)
I (u ) =  (u ) (u )  nˆ (u ), u   (6)

Where u = ( x, y , z ) is the position of a given object,  (u ) is the potentials’ global distribution,

ext (u) is the electric potentials distribution on the surface electrodes, I (u ) is the electric current
applied on the interest region’s surface,  (u ) is the electric conductivity distribution (i.e., the
goal image),  is the interest volume,  is the volume border and nˆ (u ) is the border’s normal
vector on u   position.
Finding the electric potential of the surface electrodes ext (u) , given the electric currents I (u )
and the conductivity distribution  (u ) is named EIT’s Direct Problem, and modeled by the
following relation:

ext (u) = f ( I (u),  (u)), u    u   (7)

In Direct Problem’s situation, the surface electric potentials estimative, when the internal
conductivity distribution is already known, is calculated using the Poisson’s equation, shown in
(4). Considering the contour condition, given by the following equation:


 =J
nˆ (8)

Where n̂ is the surface’s normal vector and J corresponds to the electric current density
(Baker, 1989). It is important to emphasize that there are no analytical solutions to (4) and (8), for
an arbitrary given domain  .
Nevertheless, an approximate solution to the border’s potentials may be obtained by the Finite
Elements Method (FEM), which converts the nonlinear system in (4) and (8) in the following linear
equation’s system (Bathe, 2006; Castro Martins, Camargo, Lima, Amato, & Tsuzuki, 2012):

K ( )    C = 0 (9)

Where K ( ) is a conductivity-dependent (  ) coefficients matrix and C is a constant’s

values vector. In this way, it is possible to obtain an approximated value for the border potentials
 , known as conductivity distribution  .
While the conductivity distribution determination problem  (u ) (tomographic image), given
I (u ) and ext (u) is known as EIT Inverse Problem, modeled as follows:

 (u) = f 1 ( I (u), ext (u)), u    u   (10)

In this situation it is possible to obtain the conductivity distribution  (u ) by Poisson’s

equation solution (4), considering the contour conditions, mentioned in Equations (5) and (6).

The Objective Function On EIT’s Reconstruction Images

To consider the EIT’s image reconstruction as an optimization problem, the relative squared
error was considered as the objective function (fitness function) between the object’s border
measured electric potentials and the calculated ones, originated by the generated images, given by
the candidate search algorithm (Feitosa et al., 2014; Ribeiro et al., 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). In
Equation (11), the fitness function ( f o (x) ) is given by:

1
 ne 2
  U i ( x)  Vi 2 
f o ( x) =  i 1 ne  (11)
 
  Vi 2 
 i 1 
T
V = (V1 , V2 ,..., Vn )
e
(12)
U ( x ) = (U 1 ( x), U 2 ( x),...,U ne ( x ))T (13)

Where x represents a solution candidate on the search algorithm, V and U (x ) the electrical
conductivity distribution, measured and calculated on the border, and, ne the border’s electrodes
number.

Fish School Search

Fish School Search (FSS) algorithm is a meta-heuristic based on fish behavior for food search,
developed by Bastos Filho e Lima Neto, in 2007 (Bastos-Filho et al., 2008; Bastos-Filho &
Guimarães, 2015). The search process on FSS is made by a population which its individuals (the
fishes) have limited memory. Also, each fish in the school represents a point on fitness function
domain. The FSS algorithm has four operators that can be classified in two classes: food and
swimming.

Food Operator

Aiming to find more food, the fish on the school may move. Therefore, accordingly to its positions,
each fish can be heavier or lighter (increase or decrease its weight), depending on how close they
are from food (Lins et al., 2012). The food operator, then, quantifies how successful a fish is, due
its fitness function variation. The fish weight is given by Equation 14, below:

f [ xi (t  1)]  f [ xi (t )]
Wi (t  1) = Wi (t )  (14)
max{| f [ xi (t  1)]  f [ xi (t )] |}

Where Wi (t ) , f [ xi (t )] represents the fish ’ i ’ weight and its fitness function value at xi (t ) ,
respectively. According to Bastos-Filho et al (2008) the concept of food is related to the fitness
function, i.e., in a minimization problem the amount of food in a region is inversely proportional
to the function evaluation in this region. Thus, in this case, the fish weight is given by the following
f [ xi (t )]  f [ xi (t  1)]
expression: Wi (t  1) = Wi (t )  .
max{| f [ xi (t )]  f [ xi (t  1)] |}

Swimming Operators

The swimming operators are responsible for the fish movements when they are in the food search,
and are named as: individual movement operator, collective-instinctive movement operator and
collective-volitive movement operator, explained in details as below.
The first swimming operator is the individual movement executed at the beginning of each
algorithm’s iteration, where each fish is displaced to a random position of its surroundings. An
important characteristic of this movement is that the fish only executes the individual movement
if the new position, randomly determined, is better than the previous one, meaning that it only
occurs if the new position provides a better fitness function value. Otherwise, the fish will not
execute the movement.
The individual movement of each fish is given in Equation (15), rand[1,1] is a vector
composed by several numbers randomly generated with values between [1,1] , and stepind is a
parameter that represents the fish ability of exploration on the individual movement. After the
individual movement’s calculus, the fish position is updated by Equation (16).

xindi (t  1) = stepind  rand[1,1] (15)

xindi (t  1) = xindi (t )  xindi (t  1) (16)

This movement can be understood as a disturbance in the fish position, to guarantee a wider
way to explore the search space. Therefore, to assure convergence at the end of the algorithm’s
operation, the value of stepind linearly decays, accordingly to Equation (17), where stepindinit and
stepindend are the initial and final values of stepind , and, iterations is the maximum iterations
possible value of the algorithm.

stepindinit  stepindend
stepind (t  1) = stepind (t  1)  (17)
iterations

The second swimming operator of the FSS is the collective-instinctive movement. Is the one
where the most well succeeded fishes on their individual movements attracts to themselves other
fishes. To execute this movement, it is considered the resultant direction vector, I (t ) , given by
the weighted average of all individual movements of each fish, having as weight, its fitness value
variation, given in Equation (18), where N is the total of fishes in the school. In the same way of
the feeding operator, in minimization problems the fitness variation in Equation (18) must be
inverted. After the direction vector calculation, the fish position is updated, as shown in Equation
(19).
  x f [ x (t  1)]  f [ x (t )]
N
i 1 indi i i
I (t ) = (18)
 f [ x (t  1)]  f [ x (t )]
N
i 1 i i

xi (t  1) = xi (t )  I (t ) (19)

The collective-volitive movement (the third and the last swimming operator) is based on the
school’s global performance (Lins et al., 2012). The collective-volitive movement is the tool that
provides to the algorithm the ability to adjust the search space radius. Therefore, if the fish global
weight increases, the search is characterized as well-succeeded and the fish radius search must
diminish; otherwise, the same given search radius must increase, in order to enlarge the fish
exploration, aiming to find better regions. In this movement, the fish’s position is updated in
relation to the school’s mass center, as showed in (20).

 x (t )W (t )
N
i 1 i i
Bary (t ) = (20)
 W (t )
N
i 1 i

Still, each fish’s movement is made by (21), if the school’s weight is increasing, or by Equation
(21), if the school’s weight is decreasing. Also, in the same equations, mentioned above,
rand[0,1] is a vector which values are randomly generated between [0,1] , and stepvol is the
parameter that represents the intensity of the fish search adjust intensity.

x(t  1) = x(t )  stepvol  rand[0,1]( x(t )  Bary(t )) (21)

x(t  1) = x(t )  stepvol  rand[0,1]( x(t )  Bary(t )) (22)

Fish School Search algorithm’s pseudocode is given in Algorithm 1.

Algorithm 1: Fish School Search
1. Initialize all the fish in random positions
Repeat the following (a) to (f) until some stopping
2.
criterion is met
a) For each fish do:
i) Execute the individual movement
ii) Evaluate the fitness function
iii) Execute the feeding operator
b) Calculate the resulting direction vector - I(t).
c) For each fish do:
i) Execute the collective-instinctive movement
d) Calculate the barycenter.
e) For each fish do:
i) Execute the collective-volitive movement
Update the values of individual and collective-
f)
volitive step
3. Select the fish in the final school that has better fitness.
Genetic Algorithm

Genetic Algorithm (GA) consists in a heuristic iterative process applied in search and optimization
problems constituted by metaphors inspired by the Evolutions Theories and Genetic principles
(Eberhart & Shi, 2011). The GA pseudocode is given in Algorithm 2.
Algorithm 2: Genetic Algorithm
1. Initialize a random initial population
Repeat the following (a) to (e) until the stopping
2.
criterion is met
a) Evaluate the fitness function to each individual
Parent selection: Using Roulette Wheel
b)
individuals are selected to be recombined
Recombination: New individuals are
c)
generated through 2-points crossover
Mutation: gene of descendants is randomly
d)
selected and modified.
Survivor selection: individuals of the next
e) generation are selected using elitism and
roulette wheel.
Select the individual's final population that
3.
has better fitness

Non-Blind Search

According to Saha and Bandyopadhyay (2008) in order to avoid a totally random search and
accelerate the optimization algorithm convergence, we need define the initial population of
candidate solutions using solutions obtained by imprecise, simple and direct methods (Saha &
Bandyopadhyay, 2008). Our hypothesis is that the using of the FSS to solve the ill-posed problem
of EIT can get reasonable solutions using a small number of iterations, when the initial population
has one candidate solution constructed using noisy versions of the solution obtained by the Gauss-
Newton method.

Electrical Impedance Tomography and Diffuse Optical Tomography

Reconstruction Software

Electrical Impedance Tomography and Diffuse Optical Tomography Reconstruction Software

(EIDORS) is an open source software developed for MATLAB/Octave that has as goal to solve
the direct and inverse problems of the electrical impedance tomography and diffuse optical
tomography (Adler & Lionheart, 2006; Vauhkonen, Lionheart, Heikkinen, Vauhkonen, & Kaipio,
2001). This software allows its free modification, thus, we can easily adapt it to the problem of
this work. With EIDORS it is possible simulate different kinds of meshes of finite elements that
represents computationally one cross-section of an object as well as its internal conductivity
distribution in the form of colors.
Proposed Method And Experiments

Using EIDORS, three ground-truth images were created with mesh of 415 finite elements. The
goal was detecting irregular objects isolated in three positions: in the center, between the center
and the edge and on the edge of the circular domain. The EIDORS parameters to create these
images were: 16 electrodes, two-dimensional mesh (2D) with elements density ’b’ and electrode
refinement level ’2’. The Figure 1 shows the three ground-truth images considered in this work.
Twenty (20) simulations for each ground-truth image using Fish School Search without and
with Non-Blind Search and Genetic Algorithm were performed. The relative squared error was
used between the distribution of electrical potentials measured and calculated at the edge as fitness
function for the heuristics considered in this work. Solution candidates (fish to FSS and individuals
to GA) are real-valued vectors utilized as theoretical abstractions for possible distributions
conductivity, where each dimension of the vector corresponds to a particular finite element on the
mesh.
For the simulations using Fish School Search, 100 fishes (solution candidates) were set as the
school’s population, and the following parameters were defined: W0 = 100 , stepindinit  0.01 ,
stepindend = 0.0001 and stepvol = 2stepind . Whereas for the genetic algorithm we used a population
with 100 individuals, selection for the 10 best evaluated individuals, probability of recombination
and mutation in 100 % and elitism of 10 individuals. The stop criterion for all methods was the
number of iterations in 500 iterations.

Figure 1. Ground-truth images with 415 elements for the object placed in (a) the center, (b)
between the center and the edge and (c) on the edge of the circular domain.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, the obtained results, generated by FSS with and without non-blind search will be
compared with the previous results, obtained by the EIT research group of UFPE, using genetic
algorithm. The main reason of this choice is based on the fact that genetic algorithm produces very
good and reliable results, making of it a comparison parameter for the new algorithms, used in this
work.

The Table 1 gives the fitness values of the best and the worst solutions obtained in twenty
simulations for each ground-truth image and each method. It is also given the mean and the
standard deviation of the results obtained. As a minimization problem, it is worth noting that the
best solutions is given by the lower values. Analyzing this table, we can notice that the perform of
the three methods are similar. Actually, neither method outperformed the others. One can say that
in some case one method gave the best solution, for example, in the case where the object is
between the center and the edge FSS+NBS gave the best solution, but the best solution for object
in the edge was obtained by GA. In the same way, between the worst solutions found by the
methods, FSS gave the best and obtained the smaller standard deviation for object in the center.

Table 1. The best and worst solutions, the mean and standard deviation for 20 simulations for FSS,
FSS+NBS and GA. The results in C, CE and E are for the object in center, between the center and
the edge and on the edge of the circular domain, respectively.

Stnd.
Best Worst Mean
deviation
C 0.0198 0.0242 0.0219 0.0012
FSS CE 0.0245 0.0306 0.0265 0.0013
E 0.0242 0.0600 0.0351 0.0089
C 0.0148 0.0308 0.0186 0.0038
FSS+
CE 0.0174 0.0286 0.0229 0.0032
NBS
E 0.0376 0.0590 0.0446 0.0054
C 0.0182 0.0279 0.0220 0.0027
GA CE 0.0176 0.0276 0.0223 0.0029
E 0.0208 0.0467 0.0338 0.0069

The reconstruction algorithm’s behavior can be investigated through results’ visual analysis,
obtained from the reconstruction images’, generated by the algorithms discussed in this article.
Figures 2, 3 and 4 show the reconstruction results acquired from the Fish School Search algorithms
without (FSS) and with (FSS-NBS) non-blind search, and Genetic Algorithm, respectively, for
objects placed in the center (a1, a2 and a3), between the center and the edge (b1, b2 and b3) and
on the edge (c1, c2 and c3); in the circular domain for 50, 300 and 500 iterations.
Observing the images mentioned above, it is possible to note that, with 50 iterations, the
FSS+NBS algorithm, besides its low resolution, is capable of identifying the objects on the circular
domain, unlike the other methods (having, however, an exception for the result of pure FSS, with
the object placed on the edge of the interest’s region). In 300 iterations, all methods are able to get
images anatomically correct, considering the low resolution of EIT’s images, being important to
note that FSS and FSS+NBS showed better results than GA for this number of iterations.
The algorithms’ final results (in 500 iterations) are of anatomically consistent and conclusive
images, presenting little noise and good resolution. These results allow to conclude that the final
obtained images of the three methods are similar in a qualitative analysis. Being so, the non-blind
search application to FSS algorithm made little difference on the anatomical quality of the image,
instead happened in previous works made by our research group, where the non-blind search
algorithm, applied to Genetic Algorithm (Ribeiro et al., 2014c) and Particle Swarm Optimization
(Feitosa et al., 2014) on the EIT problem, gave better results.
Figure 2. Results using FSS for an object placed in the center (a1, a2 and a3), between the center
and the edge (b1, b2 and b3) and on the edge (c1, c2 and c3) of the circular domain for 50, 300
and 500 iterations.

Figure 3. Results using fish school search with non-blind search for an object placed in the center
(a1, a2 and a3), between the center and the edge (b1, b2 and b3) and on the edge (c1, c2 and c3)
of the circular domain for 50, 300 and 500 iterations.
Figure 4. Results using genetic algorithm for an object placed in the center (a1, a2 and a3),
between the center and the edge (b1, b2 and b3) and on the edge (c1, c2 and c3) of the circular
domain for 50, 300 and 500 iterations.

Quantitatively, the algorithm’s performance can be evaluated through the medium relative error
(i.e., the fitness function) versus the iterations number graphic. The Figures 5, 6 and 7 show the
20 simulations average error decay versus the iterations number for the three reconstruction
image’s methods, in the situations where the object is placed at the center, between the center and
the edge, and on the edge, respectively. Through these graphics, it is possible to observe that the
behavior of these algorithms convergence is similar to an exponential decay, and, in the qualitative
analysis, the mentioned decay of the objective function for FSS and FSS+NBS is quite similar to
GA algorithm, having as an exception the fact that in the first iterations, this fall for the formers
algorithms is more accentuated than the latter one. These quantitative results corroborate what was
first noticed for the reconstructed images, in the qualitative analysis: FSS and FSS+NBS were able
to generate consistent images with 300 iterations, although images obtained after 500 iterations
were very similar for the three methods.
During the experiments’ execution, it was noticed a very high dependence of the Fish School
Search algorithm relied on individual movement. In fact, this movement affects the fish weight
update, the collective-instinctive and collective-volitive movements. Thus, the more well-
succeeded fishes are those ones that presents bigger variation values of the fitness function
(considering a minimization problem). This also explains the fact that the insertion of a fish on the
first population, generated by another method as Non-Blind Search did not significantly enhance
the algorithm’s performance.
Figure 5. Average error of 20 simulations in function of the number of iterations for the object in
the center of the domain using Fish School Search without (FSS) and with Non-Blind Search
(FSS+NBS) and Genetic Algorithm (AG).

Figure 6. Average error of 20 simulations in function of the number of iterations for the object
between the center and the edge of the domain using Fish School Search without (FSS) and with
Non-Blind Search (FSS+NBS) and Genetic Algorithm (AG).

Figure 7. Average error of 20 simulations in function of the number of iterations for the object on
the edge of the domain using Fish School Search without (FSS) and with Non-Blind Search
(FSS+NBS) and Genetic Algorithm (AG).
CONCLUSION

Electric impedance tomography is a promising imaging technique, that has applications on

engineering, sciences and medical sciences fields. Nowadays, the technique still presents low
resolution images, which explains the researchers’ efforts in this area. This work proposed and
investigated the Fish School Search algorithm with and without Non-Blind Search on EIT images’
reconstruction. In a general perspective, we can conclude that the use of fish school search with
solution candidates obtained by using non-blind search based on Saha and Bandyopadhyay’s
Criterion (Saha & Bandyopadhyay, 2008) presented low contribution to the quantitative and
qualitative FSS algorithm’s performance, fact that can be explained by the algorithm’s behavior,
that favors the solution candidates considering its fitness variation during the iterative process and
not the fitness value itself.
The obtained results for the here proposed methods for EIT problem’s solution were compared
to Genetic Algorithm, where the quantitative and qualitative results confirmed that Fish School
Search is capable of generating results as good as the ones given by Genetic Algorithm.
For future works, looking forward to solve problems related to software, we propose the
investigation of FSS’ algorithm’s hybridization with other methods, in order to improve EIT’s
image reconstruction, and to compare it with other methods in the actual Evolutionary Computing
state of Art, including the hybridization with NBS. This research group will also focus on the
migration of EIDORS from Matlab/Octave to a compiled or, at least, precompiled language, that
supports experiments with parallel techniques and architecture, investigating software
infrastructure and programming languages to achieve this goal.
From the hardware point of view, parallel architectures will be investigated, such as GPUs and
clusters as and parallelism techniques, all of them to reduce the execution time of those algorithms.
Evolutionary algorithms tend to load in its definitions a high parallelism level, and, with FSS, this
situation is not different, explaining why it is important to invest in researches on the fields
mentioned above.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to the Brazilian scientific agencies CAPES and FACEPE, for the partial
financial support of this work.

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