Research interests include: biomedical electronics, RF circuits, automotive electronics, robotics.
Research group membership
Electronics and Communications
Research grants and awards
- £42,750 HEIF 5 Business Enterprise Fund. Proof of Concept. Electrical Impedance Mammography (co-investigator), 2016-2017.
- £10,000, Research Excellence Award, September 2017 to July 2018, K Hayatleh & S Barker, to work on “Superior Instrumentation Amplifier and Active Electrodes for eliminating artefacts in biomedical equipment.
- £4,000, International Collaborative Research and Travel Awards,September 2017 to July 2018, K Hayatleh & S Barker. This is to work with Prof Laura M. Schreiber, Scientific Director and Chair of Cellular and Molecular Imaging, Würzburg University Hospital, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center (CHFC) Würzburg, Germany; Prof. Hubert Spiesberger, University of Mainz, Germany; and Prof. Cristiana Sebu University of Malta, Funds have also been provided to Steve Barker and myself by Prof Laura M. Schreiber for our initial visit 2 day to Würzburg University Hospital in December 2017.
Research projects
Driver Awareness Monitoring by Analysing Blink rate and Head Tilt.
Increasing Signal to Noise Ratio, and Minimising Artefacts in Biomedical Systems.
Design and development of Current Driver systems for enhancement of MRI systems resoultion.
Research impact
Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT)
Oxford Brookes has a long involvement with the development of biomedical instrumentation and imaging techniques. The group at Oxford Brookes is one of the most productive and long standing groups working on Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) worldwide and has made a number of important contributions to the theoretical and practical aspects of this problem. EIT is a non-invasive, portable and low-cost imaging tool with important applications in medicine. The reconstruction techniques and the Electrical Impedance Tomographs developed were tested in clinical trials in the Churchill and John Radcliffe Hospitals in Oxford. Novel current-mode design techniques are applied not only to EIT, but also to other areas of medical instrumentation such as a new design for Electrical Impedance Cardiography (EIG) and integrated circuit pH sensors based on Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistors (ISFET) technology.
The research on the theoretical work on EIT and the practical development of imaging devices at Oxford Brookes led to three European patent applications [I10-I12] and also contributed towards three US patents [I5-I7], the development of EIDORS [I3] which provides free software algorithms for forward and inverse modelling for Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) and Diffusion based Optical Tomography, in medical and industrial settings, and to share data and promote collaboration between groups working these fields.
Artefact Reduction in Biomedical Electronic Systems
Nearly all medical equipment which is based on passive electrodes being attached to patients suffers from artefacts (unwanted noise). Artefacts can cause a wide range of distortion effects, which impacts on the performance of the initial stages of the system – which is normally an instrumentation amplifier (IA). These effects can range from minor blurring to significant distortion being added to the desired signals from the body, which consequently can affect the interpretation of medical results. There have been numerous research projects offering various solutions to eliminate or reduce artefacts from in electronic biomedical systems, and the vast majority of these are based on the assumption that artefacts are due to noise generated by the movement of electrodes whilst attached to patients. As a result, nearly all existing methods for the removal of artefacts in medical equipment are based upon filtering, smoothing and averaging – with both analog and digital electronics approaches being used. Such approaches may be suitable if the cause of the artefacts is purely random. However, these approaches are not always effective with artefacts generated by the movement of electrodes. In this research, we will apply new real-time signal processing techniques to design and develop circuitry that significantly reduces these unwanted signals, by specifically focusing on the various causes of artefacts due to the movement of electrodes. Additionally, we will be applying new design techniques to the design of the IA.
Further information
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