Imaging Breast Cancer Targeted Chemotherapy Drug Dispersion in Ex-vivo Swine Tissue Using Electrical Impedance Tomography: A Pilot Controlled-Delivery Study

Abstract Targeted controlled release of chemotherapy drugs for breast cancer treatment has emerged as a new treatment paradigm to increase treatment efficacy while reducing systemic toxicity. However, there is a lack of ad hoc biomedical instrumentation imaging systems to detect the presence of the drug compound upon targeted delivery and measure the kinetics of drug dispersion in tissues to verify that the drug compound effectively remains in the target tissue area. The authors present the advances in the development of an Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) imaging system, and image analysis method, to measure drug dispersion in tissues as an auxiliary tool for evaluating the effectiveness of controlled delivery therapies for breast cancer treatment. Experiments were conducted where a dosage of doxorubicin (Lyophilized) is applied to ex-vivo swine tissue in a test phantom. Following the controlled delivery, a sequence of images was obtained at regular intervals. The resulting images were processed by difference imaging in time to detect the changes in drug concentration in the sample tissue. The results indicate that the EIT measurement system and difference imaging analysis method can be used to detect and quantify the drug dispersion kinetics.