Cardiac and respiratory related electrical impedance changes in the human thorax

Abstract

Electrical impedance measurements have been made from the human trunk over the frequency range 9.6 kHz to 614 kHz. Measurements have been made from 12 normal subjects and the amplitude of the impedance changes associated with the cardiac and respiratory cycles have been recorded. It was found that the real part of the impedance fell to 64.0% of its low frequency value over the measured range of frequencies and that the changes associated with respiration fell in a similar manner. However, the cardiac related changes fell more rapidly with increasing frequency to 28.2% of the low frequency value. The origin of the measured changes is discussed with a view to understanding why the cardiac related changes fall more rapidly. It is not possible to relate in any simple way the frequency dispersion of a single component to that of the whole trunk. However, the results are consistent with the lungs being the major origin of both the cardiac and respiratory related components. The origin of the cardiac related impedance changes could be the pulsatile volume changes in the pulmonary tree. These could be shunted by nonpulsatile lung tissue that has decreasing impedance at high frequency and thus decreases the relative magnitude of the cardiac related changes. This hypothesis needs to be tested using localized measurements from the thorax and 3-D modeling of the trunk.