Design and implementation of a portable, high-speed, wide-bandwidth FPGA-based electrical impedance tomography system

This paper describes the design of a small form-factor, low-cost, portable EIT system with a custom analog front end and FPGA controller. Detailed analog and digital design choices are presented and discussed in the context of currently available state-of-the art hardware components and in relation to EIT-driven system requirements. The system is capable of acquisition speeds required for real-time imaging, provides high-SNR measurements over the 100 Hz to 1 MHz frequency range, and has customizable acquisition parameters to allow users to optimize the system for a wide variety of imaging applications. Hardware characterization results demonstrate performance metrics exceeding those of existing small form-factor EIT systems, and multi-frequency imaging results highlight the ability to produce accurate EIT images over the full bandwidth. The development of this highly configurable, high-performing, portable EIT system provides a significant step toward expanding the practical use of multi-application, real-time EIT imaging.