Electrical Impedance Spectroscopic Studies on Broiler Chicken Tissue Suitable for the Development of Practical Phantoms in Multifrequency EIT

Phantoms are essential for assessing the system performance in Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT). Saline phantoms with insulator inhomogeneity fail to mimic the physiological structure of real body tissue in several aspects. Saline or any other salt solutions are purely resistive and hence studying multifrequency EIT systems cannot be assessed with saline phantoms because the response of the purely resistive materials do not change over frequency. Animal tissues show a variable response over a wide band of signal frequency due to their complex physiological and physiochemical structures and hence they can suitably be used as bathing medium and inhomogeneity in the phantoms of multifrequency EIT system. An efficient assessment of a multifrequency EIT system with real tissue phantom needs a prior knowledge of the impedance profile of the bathing medium as well as the inhomogeneity. In this direction Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) of broiler chicken muscle tissue paste and broiler chicken fat tissue is conducted from 10 Hz to 2 MHz using an impedance analyzer and their impedance profiles are thoroughly studied. Results show that the broiler chicken muscle tissue paste is less resistive than the fat tissue and hence it can be successfully used as the bathing medium of the phantoms for resistivity imaging in multifrequency EIT. Fat tissue is found more resistive than the muscle tissue which makes it more suitable for the inhomogeneity in phantoms of resistivity imaging study. doi:10.5617/jeb.174 J Electr Bioimp, vol. 2, pp. 48-63, 2011