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.
In this work, Bioimpedance Spectroscopy (BIS) is used to study fluids and cell solutions. A n ew fourelectrode- terminal (4T) chamber using 3D printing and stainless steel corrosion resistant V4A was designed to measure the impedance of live cell solutions at the frequency range 0.1Hz- 1MHz. At f < 1kHz the double layer (DL) that builds at electrode’s surface raises the impedance substantially preventing the observation of the real impedance of the cells. The new 4T design circumvents the DL, is more robust and cheap, and allows for the repeatability of the results. Experiments were performed in vitro with two cell lines, L929 (mouse fibroblasts) and HaCaT (human keratinocytes). Results show that it is possible to distinguish between the two cell types by means of its BIS measurements in the new setup. Also, a low-frequency dispersion (α-dispersion) was observed in HaCaT cells solution, but not in L929. Furthermore, a potentiostat circuit model was developed in LTSpice to simulate the hardware setup and two different circuit models were used to fit cell’s data.
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