Electrical impedance tomography. An improved design of voltmeter for semi-parallel data acquisition.

The design and implementation of high performance differential voltmeters for semi-parallel data acquisition are described. The general requirements and specific conditions encountered in electrical impedance tomography (EIT) for accurate measurements are analysed. The major parameters are common-mode rejection and bandwidth. A specific implementation of the voltmeters, with separate DC supplies and independent signal references, is described. This arrangement, in which each voltmeter follows the input signal, automatically cancels any common-mode voltage present at the input. The signal is fed to the remainder of the instrumentation through a transformer. The use of a reduced number of components contributes to the minimisation of the inter-channel variations. Furthermore, the geometrical distribution of the voltmeters around the object minimises the length of electrode wires, also reducing the input capacitance. The number of modular voltmeters and DC/DC converters is 32. The common-mode rejection of these voltmeters is greater than 72 dB in the frequency range 3.6-560 kHz. In conclusion, the proposed solution ensures a minimisation of common-mode errors and enables the use of a 250 kHz frequency.