Monitoring Myocardial Edema Tissue with Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy

A new approach for monitoring myocardium edema is introduced. It utilizes electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to characterize edema tissue. The system has been tested on an isolated pig heart to distinguish the edema from non-edema tissue by a decrease of impedance for edema. The impedance reduction for left ventricular was 10 Ω at 100 kHz. The algorithm used for the demodulation in the developed EIS system is based on Goertzel filter which is utilized to replace the traditional coherent demodulation technique. Multisine excitation with 16 tones in the frequency range up to 1 MHz with more than 1000 samples was used for the measurements

An Implantable Phase Locked Loop MEMS Based Readout System for Heart Transplantation

An implantable readout circuit using a MEMS pressure sensor has been designed and implemented to monitor the heart activity after heart transplant surgery. It features a time domain architecture using two identical voltage-controlled oscillators and phase locked loop circuits. The circuit was implemented in a 65 nm CMOS technology with 1 V power supply. It consumes 100 lW power and provides a digital output that is proportional to the analog sensor input with a bandwidth of up to 4 kHz. The SNR of the system is 53 dB. Measurements show the operation of the readout chip with the MEMS sensor

An 89.3% Current Efficiency, Sub 0.1% THD Current Driver for Electrical Impedance Tomography

Accurate electrical impedance tomography (EIT) measurements require a current driver with low total harmonic distortion (THD) and high output impedance. Conventional EIT current drivers attain good performance for these parameters but at the expense of low current efficiency. This Brief presents a differential current driver based on a current feedback structure with isolated common-mode feedback, achieving very low THD, high output impedance and high current efficiency. In addition, it uses current DACs to remove any dc offsets at the output nodes. The current driver was fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS technology with 3.3 V supply. Measured results demonstrate a THD of 0.05% and 0.1% at 80 kHz, for 1 mAp-p and 1.375 mAp-p output current, respectively. The total current consumption is 1.54 mA, resulting in a maximum current efficiency of 89.3%. The measured output impedance is 1.023 MΩ at 500 kHz and 568 kΩ at 1 MHz

Towards a system for tracking drug delivery using frequency excited gold nanoparticles

Nanoparticle-based drugs are rapidly evolving to treat different conditions and have considerable potential. A new system based on the combination of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) imaging and a power amplifier with a RF coil has been developed to study the effect of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) when excited in the MHz frequency range. We show that samples including AuNPs have a temperature increase of 1−1.5 °C due to the presence of RF excitation at 13.56 MHz which provides a higher rate of change for solutions without AuNPs. They also show more than a 50% increase in conductivity in difference imaging as the result of this excitation. The change for samples without AuNPs is 40%

Locating functionalized gold nanoparticles using electrical impedance tomography

Objective: An imaging device to locate functionalised nanoparticles, whereby therapeutic agents are transported from the site of administration specifically to diseased tissues, remains a challenge for pharmaceutical research. Here, we show a new method based on electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to provide images of the location of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) and the excitation of GNPs with radio frequencies (RF) to change impedance permitting an estimation of their location in cell models Methods: We have created an imaging system using quantum cluster GNPs as contrast agent, activated with RF fields to heat the functionalized GNPs, which causes a change in impedance in the surrounding region. This change is then identified with EIT. Results: Images of impedance changes of around 80±4% are obtained for a sample of citrate stabilized GNPs in a solution of phosphate-buffered saline. A second quantification was carried out using colorectal cancer cells incubated with culture media, and the internalization of GNPs into the colorectal cancer cells was undertaken to compare them with the EIT images. When the cells were incubated with functionalised GNPs, the change was more apparent, approximately 40±2%. This change was reflected in the EIT image as the cell area was more clearly identifiable from the rest of the area. Significance: EIT can be used as a new method to locate functionalized GNPs in human cells and help in the development of GNP-based drugs in humans to improve their efficacy in the future

Analog Integrated Current Drivers for Bioimpedance Applications: A Review

An important component in bioimpedance measurements is the current driver, which can operate over a wide range of impedance and frequency. This paper provides a review of integrated circuit analog current drivers which have been developed in the last 10 years. Important features for current drivers are high output impedance, low phase delay, and low harmonic distortion. In this paper, the analog current drivers are grouped into two categories based on open loop or closed loop designs. The characteristics of each design are identified

A low-power recursive I/Q signal generator and current driver for bioimpedance applications

This brief presents a power-efficient quadrature signal generator and current driver application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for bioimpedance measurements in an electrical impedance tomography system for monitoring lung function. The signal generator is realized by a digital recursive signal oscillator with the ability of generating quadrature signals over a wide frequency range. The generated in-phase signal is applied to a current driver. It uses a balanced current-mode feedback architecture that monitors the output current through a feedback loop to minimize common-mode voltage build-up at the injection site. The quadrature signals can be used for I/Q demodulation of the measured bioimpedance. The ASIC was designed in TSMC 65 nm technology occupying an area of 0.21 mm2. The current driver can generate up to 0.7 mA current up to 200 kHz and consumes 2.7 mW power using ±0.8 V supplies