In Vivo Rat Spinal Cord and Striated Muscle Monitoring Using the Current Interruption Method and Bioimpedance Measurements

The therapeutic value of implantable neuroprosthetic devices would improve considerably if it were possible to monitor the electrical properties of the neural tissue, so that the stimuli to the nervous system can be optimally, efficiently and safely applied. The current interruption method (CIM) was previously described by the authors to obtain ex vivo electrical equivalent circuits (EECs) of rat liver and triceps surae (TS) tissues using a four-electrode arrangement, fractional calculus, and circuit theory. The aim of this paper was to investigate the use of CIM for in vivo real-time monitoring of rat spinal cord and striated muscle, as a prior step to addressing their potential uses in spinal cord injury or other conditions involving central nervous system (CNS) damage. Statistical analysis of the EEC parameter values was carried out to elucidate their physiological meaning and their possible uses in implantable neural prostheses. (C) The Author(s) 2018. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.