Integral formulation of the complete electrode model of electrical impedance tomography

We model electrical impedance tomography (EIT) based on the minimum energy principle. It results in a constrained minimization problem in terms of current density. The new formulation is proved to have a unique solution within appropriate function spaces. By characterizing its solution with the Lagrange multiplier method, we relate the new formulation to the so-called shunt model and the complete electrode model (CEM) of EIT. Based on the new formulation, we also propose a new numerical method to solve the forward problem of EIT. The new solver is formulated in terms of current. It was shown to give similar results to that of the traditional finite element method, with simulations on a 2D EIT model.