• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.26 no.4
• /
• pp.207-214
• /
• 2005

Breast cancer detection using electrical impedance techniques is based on numerous experimental findings that cancerous tissues have higher electrical conductivity values than normal tissues. Lately, by taking advantage of the structure of current flows underneath a planar probe of array electrodes, a mathematical formula to find lesions from a measured trans­admittance map has been derived. In order to experimentally validate its mathematical analysis and the suggested lesion estimation algorithm, we developed a 256-channel trans-admittance scanner (TAS) for probing anomalies underneath a planar array of electrodes. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of the TAS. Its performance together with the lesion estimation algorithm was evaluated using saline phantoms. Further studies are proposed to validate the system on human subjects.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.84-94
• /
• 2007

In order to collect information on local distribution of conductivity and permittivity underneath a scan probe, we developed a multi-frequency trans-admittance scanner (TAS). Applying a sinusoidal voltage with variable frequency on a chosen distal part of a human body, we measure exit currents from 320 grounded electrodes placed on a chosen surface of the subject. The electrodes are packaged inside a small and light scan probe. The system includes one voltage source and 17 digital ammeters. Front-end of each ammeter is a current-to-voltage converter with virtual grounding of a chosen electrode. The rest of the ammeter is a voltmeter performing digital phase-sensitive demodulation. Using resistor loads, we calibrate the system including the scan probe to compensate frequency-dependent variability of current measurements and also inter-channel variability among multiple. We found that SNR of each ammeter is about 85dB and the minimal measurable current is 5nA. Using saline phantoms with objects made from TX-151, we verified the performance of the lesion estimation algorithm. The error rate of the depth estimation was about 19.7%. For the size estimate, the error rate was about 15.3%. The results suggest improvement in lesion estimation algorithm based on multi-frequency trans-admittance data.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.255-262
• /
• 2007

In the finite element analysis of forming process, objects are described with a finite number of elements and nodes and the approximated solutions can be obtained by the variational principle. One of the shortcomings of a finite element analysis is that the structure of mesh has become inefficient and unusable because discretization error increases as deformation proceeds due to severe distortion of elements. If the state of current mesh satisfies a certain remeshing criterion, analysis is stopped instantly and resumed with a reconstructed mesh. In the study, a new remeshing algorithm using tetrahedral elements has been developed, which is adapted to the desired mesh density. In order to reduce the discretization error, desired mesh sizes in each lesion of the workpiece are calculated using the Zinkiewicz and Zhu's a-posteriori error estimation scheme. The pre-constructed mesh is constructed based on the modified point insertion technique which is adapted to the density function. The object domain is divided into uniformly-sized sub-domains and the numbers of nodes in each sub-domain are redistributed, respectively. After finishing the redistribution process of nodes, a tetrahedral mesh is reconstructed with the redistributed nodes, which is adapted to the density map and resulting in good mesh quality. A goodness and adaptability of the constructed mesh is verified with a testing measure. The proposed remeshing technique is applied to the finite element analyses of forging processes.