Active electrode IC for EEG and electrical impedance tomography with continuous monitoring of contact impedance.

ABSTRACT

The IC presented integrates the front-end for EEG and Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) acquisition on the electrode, together with electrode-skin contact impedance monitoring and EIT current generation, so as to improve signal quality and integration of the two techniques for brain imaging applications. The electrode size is less than 2 cm(2) and only 4 wires connect the electrode to the back-end. The readout circuit is based on a Differential Difference Amplifier and performs single-ended amplification and frequency division multiplexing of the three signals that are sent to the back-end on a single wire which also provides power supply. Since the system's CMRR is a function of each electrode's gain accuracy, an analysis is performed on how this is influenced by mismatches in passive and active components. The circuit is fabricated in 0.35 µm CMOS process and occupies 4 mm(2), the readout circuit consumes 360 µW, the input referred noise for bipolar EEG signal acquisition is 0.56 µVRMS between 0.5 and 100 Hz and almost halves if only EEG signal is acquired.