Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive medical imaging technique, presently used in biomedical research, and which is gradually being adopted for clinical applications such as lung function monitoring of mechanically ventilated patients. The relatively low acquisition and very low operation costs of EIT systems makes them particularly suited to real-time long-term monitoring situations. However, current EIT instruments require careful positioning of up to 32 electrodes upon the patient's body. A contactless EIT approach would be a major improvement of the technique, significantly extending its field of applications. The goal of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of contactless EIT and to assess its potential as a clinical tool. The approach we propose to contactless EIT takes advantage of our group's recent advances in the development of low-cost ultra-sensitive giant magnetoimpedance (GMI) magnetometers. These will be used in conjunction with inductive excitation coils for contactless mapping of the conductivity changes in a region of interest; initially, on physical phantoms. The funds requested will mainly support the research of three graduate students who will be co-supervised by the team members. The development and optimization of the sensitivity of GMI magnetometers to reach sub-pT detection in an unshielded environment is an important milestone of the project. Depending upon our success in this part of the project, a new version of the magnetometer could be applied to EIT systems specifically designed to monitor epileptic patients, candidates for brain surgery to remove an epileptic focus. The increased sensitivity could also put magneto-encephalography within reach of GMI magnetometry.