A wide-band AC-coupled current source for electrical impedance tomography

A current source suitable for application in electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is described. The first stage of the commercially available current-feedback amplifier AD844 constitutes a current-conveyor implementation and allows the construction of wide-bandwidth current sources, thus avoiding the mismatching and temperature-induced problems that arise in discrete realizations. The lack in gain accuracy of this circuit is overcome by the inclusion of its input buffer in an operational amplifier (op amp) feedback loop. Saturation problems that appear when placing a DC-blocking capacitor between the source and the electrode are solved by a DC feedback that maintains DC voltage at the output near to 0 V without reducing the output impedance of the source. Two AC-coupled current sources, in both inverting and non-inverting configurations, are described and their possible applications to EIT are listed.