A study of practical biological phantoms with simple instrumentation for Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT)

16-electrode phantoms are developed and studied with a simple instrumentation developed for electrical impedance tomography. An analog instrumentation is developed with a sinusoidal current generator and signal conditioner circuit. Current generator is developed with modified Howland constant current source fed by a voltage controlled oscillator and the signal conditioner circuit consisting of an instrumentation amplifier and a narrow band pass filter. Electronic hardware is connected to the electrodes through a DIP switch based multiplexer module. Phantoms with different electrode size and position are developed and the EIT forward problem is studied using the forward solver. A low frequency low magnitude sinusoidal current is injected to the surface electrodes surrounding the phantom boundary and the differential potential is measured by a digital multimeter. Comparing measured potential with the simulated data it is intended to reduce the measurement error and an optimum phantom geometry is suggested. Result shows that the common mode electrode reduces the common mode error of the EIT electronics and reduces the error potential in the measured data. Differential potential is reduced up to 67 mV at the voltage electrode pair opposite to the current electrodes. Offset potential is measured and subtracted from the measured data for further correction. It is noticed that the potential data pattern depends on the electrode width and the optimum electrode width is suggested. It is also observed that measured potential becomes acceptable with a 20 mm solution column above and below the electrode array level.