Electrical impedance tomography spectroscopy (EITS) for human head imaging.

Abstract

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a recently developed medical imaging method which has practical advantages for imaging brain function as it is inexpensive, rapid and portable. Its principal use in validated human studies to date has been to image changes in impedance at a single excitation frequency over time, but there are potential applications where it is desirable to obtain images from a single point in time, which could be achieved by imaging over multiple frequencies. We describe a novel multifrequency EIT design which provides up to 64 electrodes for imaging in the head. This was achieved by adding a multiplexer to a single channel of an existing system, the Sheffield Mark 3.5. This provides a flexible protocol for addressing up to 64 electrodes but CMRR decreases from 90 dB to 80 dB and analogue amplifier bandwidth from > 1.6 MHz to 0.8 MHz. This did not significantly affect performance, as cylinders of banana, 10% of the diameter of a saline filled spherical tank, could be visualized with frequency referenced imaging. The design appears to have been an acceptable compromise between practicality and performance and will now be employed in clinical trials of multifrequency EIT in stroke, epilepsy and neonatal brain injury.