Dielectric relaxation time spectroscopy.

A new mathematical method is developed to recover the permittivity relaxation spectrum of living tissue from measurements of the real and imaginary parts of the impedance. Aiming to derive information about electrical properties of living tissue without the prior selection of any impedance model, the procedure calculates the relaxation time distribution. It provides new characteristic independent parameters: time constants, their distribution, and the amplitudes of the associated dispersion. As the beta-dispersion is the most important in the area of electrical impedance spectroscopy of tissue, the paper gives an estimate of the essential frequency range to cover the whole relaxation spectrum in that area. Results are presented from both simulation and known lumped--constant element circuit.

An adaptive current tomography using voltage sources.

This paper describes the development of an adaptive electric current tomography system which contains a novel front-end analog architecture. Programmable voltage sources have been used to deliver currents into the study object and to avoid the difficulties of obtaining high quality current sources. Through inverting an admittance matrix, the system is capable of achieving a desired current drive pattern by applying a computed voltage pattern. The tomograph, operating at 9.6 kHz, comprises 32 driving electrodes and 32 voltage measurement electrodes. The study of system noise performance shows high SNR in the data acquisition which is enhanced by a digital demodulation scheme. In vitro reconstruction images have been obtained with the data collected by the tomograph.