Implementation of and Electrical Bioimpedance Measurement System for Renal Function Monitoring

Abstract: Peritoneal Dialysis is a treatment for patients suffering from renal failure thatallows out-patient care. This means that the patient only needs to visit the hospital forconsultation and not for treatment, increasing considerably the comfort of the patient,while reducing remarkably the cost per patient.In order to increase the level of medical supervision obtained with the periodicvisits to the clinic, televisit has been put into practice in some hospitals. But thesetelevisits are based on indirect and qualitative indicators of renal failure, and thereforethey are just valid for detection of situations near limit cases, such as well over-hydratedor dehydrated.Electrical Bioimpedance Measurements have been proved to constitute anappropriate method for assessment of body composition, and therefore they can providewith direct indicators of body fluid distribution. Such ability of EBI technology allowsthe detection of body fluid unbalance caused by renal dysfunction, and therefore,nephrology televisits would benefit tremendously from EBI measurements.This project is based on the AD5933 Impedance Network Analyzer of AnalogDevices, and the main task is to develop a software application that controls theevaluation board in which it is implemented, and allows the storage of the EBImeasurements in EDF+ files that will facilitate the management of medical data whenapplied to televisit. These files are uploaded to XML format in order to be sent to aremote server, where a software application will have been implemented for medicalconsultation.