Open electrical impedance tomography (OEIT) with fixed electrode row is proposed to overcome the clinical application problems in closed electrical impedance tomography such as poor model adaptability, electrode position error, and inflexibility. Variation regularization algorithm (VRA) using variations function as regularization penalty term is proposed to save the more serious ill-posed inverse problem of OEIT. Simulation and experiment results show that the inverse problem of OEIT can be efficiently solved by VRA. The position, size and the relative value of conductivity of target at shallower position below electrodes can be clearly reflected by the restored image. OEIT is more potentially practical and effective in clinical applications.