In Vivo Classification of Oral Lesions Using Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy

The study included 26 participants (median [IQR] age, 64.3 [59 - 70] years; 11 (42%) female) with oral squamous cell carcinoma. Cancerous tissue was found to have significantly lower resistance and reactance than healthy tissue (p<0.0001). Tissue classification using the permittivity at 40 kHz showed the highest accuracy (88%) with an AUC of 0.88. Multiple impedance parameters achieved AUCs >0.85 for differentiating healthy from malignant tissue. Conclusion & Significance: The study indicates that EIS can effectively differentiate between healthy and cancerous oral mucosa through rapid, non-invasive intraoperative measurements. The data processing pipeline developed demonstrates success in maintaining high data quality amidst the external disturbances presented in intraoperative data collection.