Design and Fabrication of a Robust Bidirectional Current Source With Application to Transcranial Electrical Current Stimulation (Tecs) Devices Publisher



Mohammadzadeh Ghomian A^{1, 2} ; Samadzadehaghdam N^{1, 2} ; Makkiabadi B^{1, 2} Show Affiliations
Source: 2017 24th Iranian Conference on Biomedical Engineering and 2017 2nd International Iranian Conference on Biomedical Engineering# ICBME 2017 Published:2018

Abstract

Recent neuroscience studies have shown that transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) of the brain can have neuromodulatory effects on brain disorders or cognitive performance. One type of tES is known as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in which electrodes are placed on the scalp and deliver direct current with tunable amplitudes to be propagated in cortical layer. These electrodes could act as cathode or anode. In this paper, we designed and implemented a robust bipolar current source which could be applied as sink or source so that there is no need to replace the electrode positions manually while changing the stimulation direction. This makes the device much more applicable and user-friendly. We have tested the designed current source specifications in simulation environment. It has proper output resistance (12 kΩ) in both DC and AC modes (0 to 700 kHz bandwidth) and the peak value of current up to 2 mA. It also does not suffer from problems such as unbalanced negative and positive feedbacks nor is not affected by the tolerance of resistors which are prevalent in Howland current sources. © 2017 IEEE.