Microscopic impedance imaging of small tissues

Methods that can reveal the electrical properties of cells have the potential to provide new information of cell anatomy and cell function and could play a useful role in several medical applications such as cancer diagnosis. Electrical impedance imaging is an imaging modality that estimates the spatial variation of the impedance at the interior of an object from electrical measurements made on its surface. In this paper, we apply electrical impedance imaging to small tissues and provide a theoretical analysis. We develop a feasible micro-scale system of electrical impedance imaging using scanning techniques and non-contact configurations, which is described as scanning impedance imaging (SII). Two more feasible designs are proposed including rotated bi-probe (RBP) system and probe-array (PA) setup. Also included is an experimental setup of SII. The measurement results show that electrical impedance imaging has the potential to become an alternative method for cellular studies