A Wearable Open-Source electrical impedance tomography device

Abstract

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is medical imaging technique in which small electrical signals are used to map the electrical impedance distribution within the body. It is safe and non-invasive, which make it attractive for use in continuous monitoring or outpatient applications, but the high cost of commercial devices is an impediment to its adoption. Over the last 10 years, many research groups have developed their own EIT devices, but few designs for open-source EIT hardware are available. In this work, we present a complete open-source EIT system that is designed to be suitable for monitoring the lungs of free breathing subjects. The device is low-cost, wearable, and is designed to comply with the industry accepted safety standard for EIT. The device has been tested in two regimes: Firstly in terms of measurement uncertainty as a voltage measurement system, and secondly against a set of measures that have been proposed specifically for EIT hardware. The voltage measurement uncertainty of the device was measured to be − 0.7 % ± 0.36 mV. The EIT specific performance was measured in a phantom test designed to be as physiologically representative as practicable, and the device performed similarly to other published devices. This work will contribute to increased accessibility of EIT for study and will contribute to consensus on testing methodology for EIT devices.