Plessey Semiconductors announced its Electric Potential Integrated Circuit (EPIC) sensor technology at Sensors Expo (Chicago, USA June 6-8 2011). The EPIC sensor is a completely new area of sensor technology that measures changes in an electric field in a similar way to a magnetometer detecting changes in a magnetic field. The EPIC sensor, which requires no physical or resistive contact to make measurements, will enable innovative new products to be made such as medical scanners that are simply held close to a patient’s chest to obtain a detailed ECG reading or devices that can ‘see’ through walls. The sensor can be integrated on a chip with other features such as data converters, digital signal processing and wireless communications capability. The first EPIC product, the PS25150, is an ultra high impedance, solid state ECG (electrocardiograph) sensor for applications such as non-critical patient monitoring, emergency response diagnostics, sports and health products and will be sampling in September 2011.
It can be used as a dry contact ECG sensor without the need for potentially dangerous low impedance circuits across the heart. Key to this is that EPIC detects the voltage change in muscles and nerves without electrical contact so there is no need to have electrodes on or in the body to detect current changes.
Plessey Semiconductors
www.plesseysemi.com