title: Cryosurgical monitoring using bioimpedance measurements--a feasibility study for electrical impedance tomography.
abstract: The effectiveness of cryosurgery in treating tumors is highly dependent on knowledge of freezing extent, and therefore relies heavily on real-time imaging techniques for monitoring. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT), which utilizes tissue impedance variation to construct an image, is very well suited to cryosurgery since frozen tissue impedance is much higher than that of unfrozen tissue. In this study, we explore cryosurgical monitoring as a previously uninvestigated application for EIT. The feasibility of bio-impedance measurements to detect ice front propagation is demonstrated by freezing planar tissue samples one-dimensionally while measuring impedance along a linear array. The experimental results compare favorably to a simple finite element model designed to provide an electrical field visualization tool.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley 94720, USA. otten@euler.berkeley.edu
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Otten
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rubinsky
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002645:Chickens; D003452:Cryosurgery; D017097:Electric Impedance; D004867:Equipment Design; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013696:Temperature; D014054:Tomography / Q000379:methods*