Low-cost body impedance analyzer for healthcare applications

Abstract

Bioimpedance has been widely used in many health areas. The ability of the human body cells, as the response for the alternate electric current flow, can provide valuable information about health status of the subject. This work presents a low-cost body impedance measuring system. The system is composed by the impedance meter AD5933, a four-electrode front-end circuit, a microcontroller system and a computer system for processing, visualization and data storage. The developed system calculates the resistance, reactance and phase angle (PA) from measured impedance spectra. Two subjects were assessed and the bioimpedance data was compared with data encountered in the literature. Predictive equations were used to calculate fat-free mass (FFM), fat mass percentage (%FM) and total body water (TBW). Preliminary results describe consistent with the reference values in the literature, indicating that the developed device is proper to body impedance measurement. The body impedance analyzer developed in this work was conducted according to the requirements of healthcare applications, such as portability and low cost. It can be concluded that the developed system can be used for body composition assessment over a wide aging range.