Professional Doctorate in Engineering Dry Electrode-Tissue Interface Characterization and Modeling at Eindhoven University of Technology

Are you ready for a two year training program while at the same time receiving a salary? Do you like to work in an international, multidisciplinary team of professional experts for the next two years? Would you like to apply your innovative, creative ideas in developing future healthcare products in the high tech medical industry? Then you should consider starting as a PDEng trainee at TU/e and gain a head start on your fellow Master students!

Job description Professional Doctorate in Engineering' (PDEng)
During the traineeship you follow an individual program, consisting of courses, workshops, assessments and industrial projects, deepening the theoretical knowledge gained during your university studies. You will apply all knowledge gained in a large-scale in-company multidisciplinary design project. You build up a valuable network in the healthcare business community and can count on professional supervision from both the university and industry. Your individual training scheme is customized to your personal and professional skills, as well as the demands of the industrial project.
Background on the topic
The future of biosignal monitoring solutions, such as ambulatory surface electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG) or galvanic skin response (GSR) monitoring at the wrist, will, amongst others, depends on the development of comfortable dry electrodes that provide good signal quality under a wide variety of conditions. Current research often goes out to either minimizing impedance or maximizing conductance by using conductive gel. In many practical situations however, the electrode will create an electrical interface which does not fulfill any of these criteria. Modeling the electrode-tissue interface (ETI) by using the well-known electrical equivalent circuit of a resistor with in series a parallel combination of resistor(s) and capacitor(s) cannot fully explain the electrical properties of the interface, nor the processes taking place at the skin-electrode interface.

Within the Body Area Networks (BAN) team at Holst Centre, an EEG headset that uses commercially available dry electrodes with pins is developed, as well as a GSR wrist watch that uses flat dry electrodes.

The aim of the PDEng work is at characterizing the electrode-tissue-interface at rest, i.e., in the absence of body movement and hence artifacts, as well as in dynamic conditions, i.e., during natural movements. The work should lead to a detailed electrical (electrochemical) model that can explain changes in the electrical coupling between dry electrodes and tissue in both static and dynamic conditions that can be used to generate guidelines for the development of optimal dry electrodes for each application. Furthermore, it should encompass the differences in the measurement process for each of the modalities.

The project is conducted in collaboration between the Mixed-Signal Microelectronics group (www.tue.nl/msm) the Electrical Engineering department of TU/e and the Body Area networks team at Holst Center (www.holstcenter.nl).

Further details:
https://www.academictransfer.com