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Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-ionizing real-time bedside imaging modality for pulmonary imaging. Regional images of ventilation and perfusion and EIT-derived clinical measures have the potential to guide clinicians in ventilator settings and treatment decisions for patients with severe lung disease. An important question is how to present such data to clinicians in a concise and useful format. EIT-derived measures of lung function and inhomogeneity have been presented and studied on 2-D data, but not for data collected in a 3-D electrode and current pattern configuration. Here we consider regional ventilation images, EIT-derived time constants, the EIT-derived regional ventilation delay, and EIT-derived ventilation/perfusion ratio indices for a set of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome receiving mechanical ventilation. The results demonstrate marked differences in these measures between the upper and lower lung lobes in these patients, suggesting there is added clinical value in the 3-D images and EIT-derived measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]