Developing Electrical Bio-Impedance Scanning System for Breast Imaging

ABSTRACT Electrical Bio-impedance Tomography (EBT) is a home made non-invasive system designed to image breasts in the geometry of mammogram through applyi ng an alternating-current (AC)on the breast and measuring the voltage distribution that result, and by using computational methods one can reconstruct an image of impedance (Z) that corresponds to both the anatomy and pathology of the breast. With 64 stainless-steel electrodes, 26 breasts in 26 women have been scanned with this system using 4 mA root mean square (RMS) AC-current with frequency 1 MHz. Characteristic bio-impedance images emerged for mammographically normal and abnormal cases. We demo nstrated the impedance breast images that correctly localized lesions. Using the visual crite rion, the EBT system was able to identify 80% of th e tumour cases, 67% of the abnormal cases, and 73% of normal cases. EBT appears to be promising in breast cancer screening, but improvements must be m ade before the system reaches its full potential