A new geometric factor for in situ resistivity measurement using four slender cylindrical electrodes.

Abstract

The four-electrode method is commonly used for in situ measurement of the electrical resistivity of biological tissues. In this paper, a new geometric factor between the resistivity and measured resistance using the four-electrode interface is derived in the prolate spheroidal coordinates and experimentally validated. Evaluation of the experimental results shows that the resistivities determined using both the derived geometric factor and a commercial conductivity meter are in close agreement even when the length of the immersed electrodes becomes long with respect to the inter-electrode spacing. The evaluation also shows the effect of the relative size of the sample volume when the limitation to semi-infinite volume begins to result in poor accuracy.