PVC/CNT Electrospun Composites: Morphology and Thermal and Impedance Behavior.

Due to their mechanical robustness and chemical resistance, composite electrospun membranes based on polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are suitable for sensor applications. Aiming to improve the electrical characteristics of these membranes, this work investigated the effects of the addition of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to PVC electrospun membranes, in terms of morphology and thermal and impedance behavior. Transmission electron microscopy images evidenced that most of the nanotubes were encapsulated within the fibers and oriented along them, while field-emission scanning electron micrographs revealed that the membranes consisted of uniform fibers with an average diameter of 339 ± 31 nm, regardless of the addition of the carbon nanotubes.

Switched CMOS current source compared to enhanced Howland circuit for bio-impedance applications.

Bio-impedance Spectroscopy (BIS) is a technique that allows tissue analysis to diagnose a variety of diseases, such as medical imaging, cancer diagnosis, muscle fatigue detection, glucose measurement, and others under research. The development of CMOS integrated circuit front-ends for bioimpedance analysis is required by the increasing use of wearable devices in the healthcare field, as they offer key features for battery-powered wearable devices. These features include high miniaturization, low power consumption, and low voltage power supply.

Parasitic Effects on Electrical Bioimpedance Systems: Critical Review.

Parasitic capacitance represents the main error source in measurement systems based on electrical impedance spectroscopy. The capacitive nature of electrodes' impedance in tetrapolar configuration can give origin to phase errors when electrodes are coupled to parasitic capacitances. Nevertheless, reactive charges in tissue excitation systems are susceptible to instability.

Using segmental bioimpedance analysis to estimate soft tissue and chemical composition of retail cuts and carcasses of lambs.

This study evaluated the potential of segmental bioimpedance analysis (SBIA) to estimate the composition of retail cuts and their predictability to infer on the carcass composition in lambs. Leg, rib, shoulder, neck, and loin from thirty-one lamb carcasses were evaluated. A single-frequency bioelectrical impedance analyzer at 50 kHz was used to perform measurements.

Design of Howland Current Sources Using Differential Evolution Optimization.

Howland circuits have been widely used in Electrical Bioimpedance Spectroscopy applications as reliable current sources. This paper presents an algorithm based on Differential Evolution for the automated design of Enhanced Howland Sources according to arbitrary design constraints while respecting the Howland ratio condition. Results showed that the algorithm can obtain solutions to commonly sought objectives, such as maximizing the output impedance at a given frequency, making it a versatile method to be employed in the design of sources with specific requirements.

Analytical Model for Blood Glucose Detection Using Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy.

Pathogens and adulterants in human feeding consumables can be readily identified according to their electrical properties. Electrical bioimpedance analysis (BIA) has been widely used for body contents characterization, such as blood, urine, lactate, and sweat. If the concentration of glucose in blood alters the electrical properties of the blood medium, then the impedance spectrum obtained by BIA can be used to measure glycemia.

Assessing the composition of the soft tissue in lamb carcasses with bioimpedance and accessory measures.

Consumers are demanding additional information to support their decision-making while shopping for meat. In the lamb industry, labelling carcasses with composition information is challenging. This is due to issues with conventional analytical procedures, such as the time spent with determinations and product loss or devaluing due to sampling for analysis.

Mirrored enhanced Howland current source with feedback control.

An impedance spectrum is calculated by the ratio between an injecting current and a resulting measured voltage, which allows the extraction of electrical properties from the material under study. The current source is considered an essential block to deliver a controlled current to a wide range of working loads and large bandwidth. To comply with such requirements, the current source output impedance must be much higher than the load impedance at each discrete frequency within the range.

Extracting Parasite Effects of Electrical Bioimpedance Measurements.

The objective of this work is to develop a technique for filtering parasitic effects from the impedance spectra (IS) measured in biological material phantoms. IS data are contaminated with unexpected capacitive and inductive effects from cable, input/output amplifiers capacitances, electrode polarization, temperature and contact pressure when collecting data. It is proposed a model which contains an RLC-network in series with the Cole model (RSC), then called RLC-Cole.

Electrical properties of phantoms for mimicking breast tissue.

In order to test and calibrate an EIT (Electrical Impedance Tomography) system, many researchers rely on phantoms mimicking breast tissues. These phantoms are usually made of saline solutions, agar and/or vegetables, allowing the user to set the conductivity of the material by changing the salt concentration. Due to that fact that the dispersion behavior in the vicinity of megahertz is fundamental to detect carcinoma, this work aims to propose a phantom composed by a mixture of agar and gelatin (emulating the normal tissue) and a piece of carrot (emulating the carcinoma).

Numerical sensitivity modeling for the detection of skin tumors by using tetrapolar probe.

The measurement of electrical impedance of skin using surface electrodes permits the assessment of changes in local properties of the skin and can be used in the detection of tumors. The sensitivity of this technique depends mainly on the geometry of the probe and the size of the tumor. In this article, the impedance method was used to estimate the sensitivity of a tetrapolar probe in detecting small regions of increased conductivity in a stratified model of human skin.

Frequency-domain reconstruction of signals in electrical bioimpedance spectroscopy.

The use of an amplitude/phase retrieval algorithm in electrical bioimpedance spectroscopy (EIS) that allows a new technique to reconstruct the impedance spectrum in the frequency-domain is reported. To the authors' knowledge this is the first time the proposed algorithm has been used to calculate the modulus or phase of a bioimpedance in EIS from one of these two experimentally obtained parameters. The algorithmic technique is demonstrated in EIS, when wide-bandwidth amplifiers,phase-detectors, and high speed converters determine spectra over frequencies up to 500 kHz at isolated points in the frequency interval.

Stand-off electrode (SoE): a new method for improving the sensitivity distribution of a tetrapolar probe.

Tetrapolar probes have been widely used for measuring the impedance spectra of tissues. However, the non-uniform sensitivity distribution of these probes limits the ability to identify conductivity changes in tissue. This paper presents a novel method for improving the sensitivity distribution beneath a tetrapolar probe.