Electrical Instrumentation in Medical Research

Abstract

RECENTLY there has been a heartening trend in biological research toward closer collaboration between the physical and the biological sciences. This article is a resume of a program of this nature being pursued at the University of Pennsylvania. In order that such a program be well balanced, research, education, and instrumentation are all required. These three topics are discussed and new technical developments are described. Work done in the field of electrocardiography may be cited as one example of research. In explanation of the distribution of potentials on the body surface arising from heart action, an ingenious theory has evolved which is widely accepted. However, some of the fundamental postulates on which this theory is based are open to question. Chief among these is the assumption that for electrocardiographic purposes the body behaves as a homogenous volume conductor. Through the years, numerous attempts have been made to check this assumption both by measuring directly the resistivities of the various tissues within the body and by more indirect means. Investigators have reached widely differing conclusions from their experiments so that there is still no definitive answer to the question. This past work has been reviewed and evaluated and a series of experiments is under way which, it is hoped, will throw further light on the subject.