Exploring the Potential of Electrical Impedance Tomography for Tissue Engineering Applications

In tissue engineering, cells are generally cultured in biomaterials to generate three-dimensional artificial tissues to repair or replace damaged parts and re-establish normal functions of the body. Characterizing cell growth and viability in these bioscaffolds is challenging, and is currently achieved by destructive end-point biological assays. In this study, we explore the potential to use electrical impedance tomography (EIT) as a label-free and non-destructive technology to assess cell growth and viability. The key challenge in the tissue engineering application is to detect the small change of conductivity associated with sparse cell distributions in regards to the size of the hosting scaffold, i.e., low volume fraction, until they assemble into a larger tissue-like structure. We show proof-of-principle data, measure cells within both a hydrogel and a microporous scaffold with an ad-hoc EIT equipment, and introduce the frequency difference technique to improve the reconstruction.