Electrical Impedance-Based Characterization of Hepatic Tissue with Early-Stage Fibrosis.
Susana Fuentes-VélezSharmila FagooneeAlessandro SanginarioMarco PizziFiorella AltrudaDanilo DemarchiPublished in: Biosensors (2022)
Liver fibrosis is a key pathological precondition for hepatocellular carcinoma in which the severity is confidently correlated with liver cancer. Liver fibrosis, characterized by gradual cell loss and excessive extracellular matrix deposition, can be reverted if detected at the early stage. The gold standard for staging and diagnosis of liver fibrosis is undoubtedly biopsy. However, this technique needs careful sample preparation and expert analysis. In the present work, an ex vivo, minimally destructive, label-free characterization of liver biopsies is presented. Through a custom-made experimental setup, liver biopsies of bile-duct-ligated and sham-operated mice were measured at 8, 15, and 21 days after the procedure. Changes in impedance were observed with the progression of fibrosis, and through data fitting, tissue biopsies were approximated to an equivalent RC circuit model. The model was validated by means of 3D hepatic cell culture measurement, in which the capacitive part of impedance was proportionally associated with cell number and the resistive one was proportionally associated with the extracellular matrix. While the sham-operated samples presented a decrease in resistance with time, the bile-duct-ligated ones exhibited an increase in this parameter with the evolution of fibrosis. Moreover, since the largest difference in resistance between healthy and fibrotic tissue, of around 2 kΩ, was found at 8 days, this method presents great potential for the study of fibrotic tissue at early stages. Our data point out the great potential of exploiting the proposed needle setup in clinical applications.
Keyphrases
- liver fibrosis
- extracellular matrix
- early stage
- ultrasound guided
- label free
- single cell
- systemic sclerosis
- cell therapy
- type diabetes
- idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
- stem cells
- big data
- clinical trial
- fine needle aspiration
- pet ct
- clinical practice
- metabolic syndrome
- risk assessment
- insulin resistance
- high resolution
- mass spectrometry
- skeletal muscle
- double blind
- weight loss
- weight gain