WIRELESS MEASUREMENT SYSTEM FOR NON-INVASIVE BIOMEDICAL MONITORING OF PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESSES

This paper presents new portable electronic measurement equipment for non-invasive biomedical monitoring of selected psychosomatic processes. The main goal is monitoring of the psycho-galvanic reflex (PGR) of the human skin that might be very useful for identification of psychical stress, performed in different medical as well as psychological experiments. A portable monitoring system, applicable also in wireless measurement environment, was designed and developed. Comparison to a standard laboratory-like bridge-based measurement system was done in terms of accuracy, sensitivity and other main features. The proposed measurement system employs measurement of the human skin conductivity using the interdigitated array (IDA) microelectrodes. The proposed monitoring equipment utilizes microprocessors with an RF wireless communication module used for data transfer between the measurement modules and a personal computer. A graphical user interface (GUI), developed in C++ under Windows XP platform, is used to provide necessary calibration of the measurement as well as storage, displaying and postprocessing of the measured data (real and imaginary components of the impedance as well as phase of the measured impedance). The measurement method itself and the achieved results are discussed. K e y w o r d s: biomedical monitoring, IDA microelectrodes, non-invasive monitoring, physiologic processes, psychogalvanic reflex, skin conductivity measurement