The selection strategy of optimized arrays for 3-D electrical resistivity tomography

Abstract Within electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), the selection of arrays and electrode locations can effectively enhance the resolution of imaging. By properly selecting and optimizing the survey design, a better resolution will be obtained with fewer electrodes and configurations than traditional arrays. Previous work has demonstrated that the optimized survey design using the ‘Compare R’ method can provide better resolution than conventional arrays. This paper adds target-oriented selection and modified the original ‘Compare R’ method. The modified method first selects the target area in the comprehensive data sets, then optimizes the choice by the modified CR method, and finally combines the optimization results of multiple sets of target areas. For the target area, this method can select fewer electrodes and arrays than the original CR method, get better resolution than conventional arrays, and take less calculation time.