Electrical Impedance Tomography

Employment of technical equipment and devices increased intensely in anaesthesiology and intensive care medicine respectively during the last decades. Regarding mechanical ventilation, which is of outstanding clinical value up to date, lots of modes, parameters and features have been developed and technically implemented in modern respirators [1]. Although the ARDS network encouraged scientific projects concerning concepts of protective artificial respiration during the past ten years, there is still a major deficiency regarding monitoring of ventilation [2]. Up to date, there are just global and very imprecise modalities to monitor injurious impacts of ventilation to lung tissue at bedside. Since CT and MRI scans are associated with high resource consumption, the central method for controlling ventilatory settings and further treatment still is blood gas analysis and predefined algorithms (e.g. according to the ARDS network protocol).