RESUMO
Objective To study a method for monitoring multichannel electrode-scalp contact impedances in electrical impedance tomography (EIT), and to provide support for exploring the impact of contact impedances on imaging and the suppression method.Methods A reference electrode was introduced for the system,placed on the back of the neck or the top of the head. In the spare time of boundary voltage signal acquisition phase, the method of two electrodes was adopted to measure the electrical impedance between each imaging electrode and reference electrode, which was used to analyze the characteristics of multichannel contact impedances.Based on the existing EIT hardware system,the module for monitoring multichannel contact impedance was implemented.Results The calibration board test showed that the measurement error of this method was less than 1‰,and the maximum relative fluctuation of the measurement result within 10 hours was less than 1‰. Preliminary human test indicated that this method had the ability to obtain two kinds of information about spatial consistency and temporal stability of 16-channel contact impedances. Conclusion This method has high accuracy and stability,so it meets the requirements of monitoring multichannel contact impedances in brain EIT.