Use of electrical impedance spectroscopy to distinguish cancer from normal tissues with a four electrode terminal setup

Abstract

Cancer and normal tissues are visually different from each other, especially so in more advanced cancer stages. More important, they are not only visually contrasting, but if an electric field is applied to both tissue types and the frequency is varied in a wide range, it will be seen that the two tissue types in general have a spectral response divergent from each other and this has to do with the characteristics of cancer tissues in contrast to normal ones. In this work, Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy is applied to try to distinguish cancer from healthy tissues by means of their impedance spectrum using a four-electrode-terminal setup. The use of the fourterminal- setup setup is important to circumvent the impact of electrode polarization at frequencies below 1 kHz.