Ex-Vivo Breast Tissues Characterization Using Bioimpedance Spectroscopy

Abstract

Breast cancer incidence and mortality are drastically increasing globally. The factor behind these problems are complex but reflect both aging and growth of the population within a given country. On top of this, regardless of Country’s economic profiles, breast cancer incidence is dramatically spreading both in developed and developing regions. In order to tackle this problems, breast cancer detection and screening techniques have been introduced to both national and global market. X-ray mammography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are the most commonly being used techniques for the detection of cancerous tissues in breast. Furthermore, several researches have been done to characterize breast tissues even though they come up with their critical down falls which underscores the need for an improved technique for breast tissues characterization that can satisfies the need of wider community. In this study the Bioelectric Impedance Spectroscopy was used to characterize the breast tissue samples in ex-vivo setup to identify and analysis the frequency response of malignant and normal breast tissues. The AFE (Analog Front End) circuitry was designed to achieve the four electrodes configuration of Ad5933evalboard.Breast tissues which were collected from 20 patients were characterized with excitation current 1 KHZ-100 KHZ frequency ranges. The primary results indicated that there was significant difference between the frequency response of normal and malignant breast tissues with their dielectric properties. The result from ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) test illustrated that there was significant statistical difference (p=0.0002) among the phase angle of three breast tissue samples .More importantly Turkey’s Honestly Significant Difference Post Hoc test showed that there was significant difference (p<0.001) between two groups of breast tissue samples (normal tissues and high grade cancerous lesions) at p=0.05 level of significance. The results of bode and Nyquist plot also indicated that there was a significant differences in the frequency responses of malignant and normal breast tissues particularly in their magnitude and phase values. The results of this study strongly suggested that BIS (Bioimpedance Spectroscopy) technique can be used to identify breast cancer. However, large scale and in-vivo study required before applying as routine clinical instruments