Investigation of electrochemical characterization of agarose gel for model of human head correlated to lightning currents

Abstract

Problems arisen in biomedical field have given an influence to the development of engineering devices which can especially solve special problems. Lightning injury is one of the special cases occurred that has some reasons which are not yet understood. Tissue diagnostic procedure is really beneficial in treating the diseases; hence further study concerning this procedure is required in electrochemical measurements. Electrical properties of tissue are the primary properties for the study in the current distribution through human body which is correlated to lightning current. Based on previous studies, human head is always the common contact point of lightning injury. Thus, this leads to the investigations of corresponding lightning injury through human body. This thesis focuses on the fabrication of tissue samples including the brain, skull and scalp phantom as a human head model. The fabrication is characterized based on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements against the frequency range from 100Hz to 1MHz to recognize the electrical properties and analyze the ion charge distribution by the diffusion rate of tissue phantom samples to contribute the stability poses. The measurements are conducted to determine the electrical conductivity, resistivity, relative permittivity and dissipation factor that affect the concentration of electrolyte. From this research, it is verified that the electrical properties show a comparable result with previous studies. It is also proven that the diffusion rate accelerates in higher concentration of solvent, confirming that all tissue phantoms are stable according to the tissue properties.