Portraying skin-like electrodes using a biomimetic skin phantom

Abstract

Lightweight wearable electrodes advance modern medical technology and the lives of patients. To produce these medical devices, human subjects must be available for testing. Obtaining a diverse group of human subjects is challenging; therefore, our solution is to fabricate a skin phantom for companies that is low-cost and easy to produce. The skin phantom consists of the lower deep tissue layer and the upper stratum corneum. The upper layer consists of hundreds of holes in 0.2 mm diameter cut by a laser cutter to achieve a porosity of 1.4%. The deep tissue layer consists of 0.9% saline solution in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to create cryogels using a freeze-thaw technique. Our objectives include 1) completing fabricated skin phantom, 2) analyzing performance data with impedance measurements and stimulated ECG signals, and 3) finally comparing the impedance of our skin-like electrodes with one of medical grade electrodes on the phantom. To confirm the skin phantom has a similar skin impedance range, five human subjects undergo testing to obtain a baseline for electrical performance. Current testing includes collecting skin impedance data from five test subjects and the active skin phantom with a simulated ECG signal. Our results so far show that the skin phantom is easy to produce, low in cost, and eliminates the need for human test subjects when conducting experiments for wearable electrodes.