An Electrode Array Sensor for Tongue Cancer Detection With Bioelectrical Impedance Spectroscopic Tomography

Bioelectrical Impedance Spectroscopic Tomography (BIST) has been proposed for the detection of tongue tumors. The proposed method is based on Electrode Array Sensor that enables the localization of tongue tumor and quantitative evaluation of the maximum tumor dimension ${d}_{\max}$ . In this study, the detection capability of Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) at different positions of the Electrode Array Sensor is investigated by numerical analysis. In addition, the detection sensitivity of Bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy (BIS) of tumor tissue at different positions of the sensor is also investigated. The sensitivity of the sensor is higher than the other excitation fields when the tumor tissue is located in the center of the excitation field. Adipose tissue from beef and porcine is selected to mimic tongue tissue. Five tongue models prepared with ${d}_{\max} =3$ mm, ${d}_{\max}=4.5$ mm, ${d}_{\max}=6$ mm, ${d}_{\max}=7.5$ mm and ${d}_{\max}=9$ mm. The results of BIST detection experiments showed that BIST method is able to localize tumor tissue of different dimensions on the tongue, with the best EIT imaging at Pos2 of the sensor. The ${Z}''_{{\mathrm {relax}}}$ is found to be different dimensions of tumor tissue by BIS detection, which increased with the increase of ${d}_{\max}$ . Finally, curve fitting is performed between ${Z} ''_{{\mathrm {relax}}}$ and ${d}_{\max}$ of the tumor tissue. The ${d}_{\max}$ of tumor tissue is calculated according to ${Z} ''_{{\mathrm {relax}}}$ , which helps doctors determine the Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) classification of tumor tissue.

I. Introduction

Head and neck tumor is the sixth most common malignant tumor in the world; especially, oral cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors of the head and neck. Two-thirds of oral cancer is defined as tongue cancer (TC), which has tumor tissue located in the tongue body [1]–[3]. In recent years, the incidence of oral cancer has decreased, especially in the areas including lips, gums, oral floor, hard palate, buccal mucosa, etc., but the incidence of tongue cancer (including the dorsal surface of tongue, tongue margin, ventral surface of tongue and 2/3 regions of tongue) has increased significantly [4].