A digitally invertible universal amplifier for recording and processing of bioelectric signals

Abstract

The recording and processing of bioelectric signals over the decades has led to the development of many different types of analog filtering and amplification techniques. Meanwhile, there have also been many advancements in the realm of digital signal processing that allow for more powerful analysis of these collected signals. The issues with present acquisition schemes are that (1) they introduce irreversible distortion to the signals and may ultimately hinder analyses that rely on the unique morphological differences between bioelectric signal events and (2) they do not allow the collection of frequencies in the signal from direct-current (DC) to high-frequencies. The project put forth aims to overcome these two issues and present a new scheme for bioelectric signal acquisition and processing. In this thesis, a system has been developed, verified, and validated with experimental data to demonstrate the ability to build an invertible universal amplifier and digital restoration scheme. The thesis is primarily divided into four sections which focus on (1) the introduction and background information, (2) theory and development, (3) verification implementation and testing, and (4) validation implementation and testing. The introduction and background provides pertinent information regarding bioelectric signals and recording practices for bioelectric signals. It also begins to address some of the issues with the classical and present methods for data acquisition and make the case for why an invertible universal amplifier would be better. The universal amplifier transfer function and architecture are discussed and presented along with the development and optimization of the characterization and the inversion, or restoration, filter process. The developed universal amplifier, referred to as the invertible universal amplifier (IUA), while the universal amplifier and the digital restoration scheme together are referred to as the IUA system. The IUA system is then verified on the bench using typical square, sine, and triangle waveforms with varying offsets and the results are presented and discussed. The validation is done with in-vivo experiments showing that the IUA system may be used to acquire and process bioelectric signals with percent error less than to 6% when post-processed using estimated characteristics of and when compared to a standard flat bandwidth high-pass cutoff amplifier.