title: Measurement of electrode-tissue interface impedance for improvement of a transcutaneous data transmission using human body as transmission medium.
abstract: The electrical property between an electrode and skin or tissue is one of the important issues for communication performance of the transcutaneous communication system (TCS) using a human body as a conductive medium.In this study, we used a simple method to measure interface resistance between the electrode and skin on the surface of the body. The electrode-electrode impedance was measured by a commercially available LCR meter with changes in the distance between two electrodes on an arm of a healthy male subject, and we obtained the tissue resistivity and electrode-skin interface resistance using the cross-sectional area of the arm.We also measured transmission gain of the TCS on the surface of the body, and we investigated the relationship between electrode-skin interface resistance and transmission gain. We examined four kinds of electrodes: a stainless steel electrode, a titanium electrode, an Ag-AgCl electrode and an Ag-AgCl paste electrode. The stainless steel electrode, which had lower electrode-skin resistance, had higher transmission gain.The results indicate that an electrode that has lower electrode-skin resistance will contribute to improvement of the performance of the TCS and that electrode-skin interface resistance is one of valuable evaluation parameters for selecting an optimum electrode for the TCS.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Engineering and Science, Tokai University, Sapporo, Japan.
authors.forename: Eiji
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Okamoto
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Engineering and Science, Tokai University, Sapporo, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshikuni
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Engineering and Science, Tokai University, Sapporo, Japan.
authors.forename: Sakiko
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kikuchi
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Information Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshinori
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Mitamura
mesh_terms: D017097:Electric Impedance; D004566:Electrodes; D004867:Equipment Design; D006354:Heart, Artificial; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012867:Skin / Q000737:chemistry*
keywords: Artificial organs; artificial heart; electrode impedance; intrabody communication; transcutaneous monitoring