System and method for soft-field tomography data acquisition

A multi-channel application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) comprising:

• a single reference excitation source configured to generate at least one excitation for driving each of a plurality of channels of a soft-field tomography system;
• one or more derived excitation sources, configured to generate excitations derived from the single reference excitation source;
• a response detector configured to measure a response at each of a plurality of transducers in each of the plurality of channels;
• and
• a reduced bit digitizer having fewer bits than the number of bits of the single reference excitation source and configured to digitize an output of the response detector.

A method for providing excitation and data acquisition for a soft-field tomography system, the method comprising:

• deriving one or more excitations from at least one reference excitation source which are applied to a plurality of channels of the soft-field tomography system;
• measuring at least one difference between the excitation applied at one or more transducers corresponding to the plurality of channels and a reference excitation;
• and
• digitizing the measured difference using a reduced number of data bits.