Impedance sensing for monitoring neuronal coverage and comparison with microscopy

We investigated the applicability of electric impedance sensing (IS) to monitor the coverage of adhered dissociated neuronal cells on glass substrates with embedded electrodes. IS is a sensitive method for the quantification of changes in cell morphology and cell mobility, making it suitable to study aggregation kinetics. Various sizes of electrodes were compared for the real-time recording of the impedance of adhering cells, at eight frequencies (range: 5 Hz-20 kHz). The real part of the impedance showed to be most sensitive at frequencies of 10 and 20 kHz for the two largest electrodes (7850 and 125,600 μm(2)). Compared to simultaneous microscopic evaluation of cell coverage and cell spreading, IS shows more detail.