Novel electrode–skin interface for breast electrical impedance scanning

The high false-positive rate in clinical examinations limits the application of electrical impedance scanning (EIS) on breast cancer detection. One of the reasons is the non-uniform electrode–skin interface, which induces the ‘contact artifact’ in the results. To decrease the ‘contact artifact’, we designed a novel disposable electrode–skin interface [cotton fine grid thin layer (CFGTL)-interface], which is 0.2-mm thick and has a conductivity similar to that of normal breast tissue. The performance of the CFGTL-interface was evaluated by comparing it with the ultrasound gel interface generally used in EIS examinations. The test was conducted on 50 healthy female volunteers using two different interfaces separately, and a paired comparison method was used to analyze the effect of the CFGTL-interface on EIS measuring data. The results showed that the CFGTL-interface could effectively decrease the variation and the range of data fluctuation, which suggested that CFGTL-interface can decrease the ‘contact artifact’ and increase the accuracy of the examination. The CFGTL-interface appears to be an effective electrode–skin interface for breast EIS examination.