In this work, the electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) with neural network multi-criteria optimization image reconstruction technique (NN-MOIRT), early developed by the authors, is applied to imaging bubble column and three-phase fluidized bed systems in the real time manner. Air, norpar (paraffin) and glass-beads are used as the gas, liquid, and solid phases, respectively. A three-phase capacitance model coupled with a two-region model is proposed to attain the gas holdup and the solids fraction from the permittivity maps of the three-phase system. The two-region model assumes that the solids fraction in the emulsion phase in the no bubble region is the same as in the bubble region. The three-phase capacitance model combines series and parallel capacitance connections among gas, liquid and solid components to relate the three-phase permittivity to each phase holdup. A direct image calculation to obtain the gas holdup from the permittivity map of the three-phase system is also performed by determining the permittivity threshold for the gas bubbles, Comparisons of the gas holdup obtained by ECT with that obtained from liquid head measurement showed a good agreement, validating the applicability of the model and its associated image calculation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.