An innovative process for imaging cancer using Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT)

Professor Richard Bayford, the Team Leader, is an international pioneer at the forefront of the development of Electric Impedance Tomography (EIT) which he is already using to image and monitor neonatal lung function. This is a special imaging technique with many advantages which we list below. It involves placing a series of electrodes on the body surface and analyzing the minute currents that flow between them to reveal abnormal cell structures such as tumours.

EIT equipment like this experimental 16-channel device is inexpensive and highly portable. It fits easily onto a desktop and so can be used for bedside monitoring and only needs a laptop computer in addition to the basic equipment.

Gold Nanoparticle (gnp) Technology

The non-toxic nanoparticles have a gold core of approximately 3 nm diameter and can be coated with several different effector molecules. They are so small that roughly 3 million add up to 1 cm!

1. Coating with effectors which are ligands for the tumour cell surface (see Figure) enable the gnp to act as ‘hunters’ to selectively seek out and target the tumour and its secondary growths.
2. The gnp will enter the tumour cell and deliver a cytotoxic drug avoiding the debilitating side-effects of administration of the free drug during chemotherapy.

Gold nanoparticles enhance EIT imaging and deliver therapy

The tumour heavily infiltrated by the gnp is now more accurately imaged by EIT.

These are the first EIT images enhanced by gold nanoparticles, the particles in gel are placed in the centre of the object in the left-hand image; the right-hand image was produced without the particles being present.

In addition to delivering cytotoxic drugs to the tumour cells, heating the gnp by an external field can destroy the tumour cells.

We expect several beneficial outcomes of this project:

• Rapid diagnosis of cancer with a non-invasive technology which does not use ionizing radiation, nor requires the patient to be immobile during the imaging processing, of particular benefit for infant patients.
• EIT is silent and portable and provides a far less expensive alternative to MRI or PET scanners (probably less than £10,000 vs. £1 million), making it more accessible to a large number of medical centres which lack these scanners and providing an important opportunity for UK investment manufacturers.
• Both radiation and non-targetted chemotherapies expose the human body to harmful substances, whereas the nanoparticles are non-toxic and rapidly excreted if not bound to tumour cells.
• Treatment is targeted at cancer cells only and will not destroy neighbouring cells
• Once cancer cells have been identified, treatment can be carried out immediately
• Diagnosis and treatment will be less harmful for children.
• The cost of treatment is comparable to more conventional methods and will be far cheaper than monoclonal antibody therapies.

Team: