Real-Time Detection of Hemothorax and Monitoring its Progression in a Piglet Model by Electrical Impedance Tomography: A Feasibility Study

Abstract

Hemothorax is a serious medical condition that can be life-threatening if left untreated. Early diagnosis and timely treatment are of great importance to produce favorable outcome. Although currently available diagnostic techniques, e.g., chest radiography, ultrasonography, and CT, can accurately detect hemothorax, delayed hemothorax cannot be identified early because these examinations are often performed on patients until noticeable symptoms manifest. Therefore, for early detection of delayed hemothorax, real-time monitoring by means of a portable and noninvasive imaging technique is needed. In this study, we employed electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to detect the onset of hemothorax in real time on eight piglet hemothorax models. The models were established by injection of 60 ml fresh autologous blood into the pleural cavity, and the subsequent development of hemothorax was monitored continuously. The results showed that EIT was able to sensitively detect hemothorax as small as 10 ml in volume, as well as its location. Also, the development of hemothorax over a range of 10 ml up to 60 ml was well monitored in real time, with a favorable linear relationship between the impedance change in EIT images and the volume of blood injected. These findings demonstrated that EIT has a unique potential for early diagnosis and continuous monitoring of hemothorax in clinical practice, providing medical staff valuable information for prompt identification and treatment of delayed hemothorax.

The Research Progress of Electrical Impedance Tomography for Lung Monitoring

“…EIT is often used in the treatment of some lung failure diseases (Frerichs and Zhao, 2019). In addition to the application in lung diseases, there are also some clinical applications in tumor detection or early detection of some diseases for EIT (Ma et al, 2014;Dai et al, 2018;Lee et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2020). With the continuous development of EIT theory and technology, the clinical application of EIT technology will be more and more.…”

A Review of Algorithms and Hardware Implementations in Electrical Impedance Tomography (Invited)

“…Since electrical impedance tomography (EIT) was proposed, far-reaching developments have taken place in EIT system from algorithm optimizations to hardware designs. Compared with other tomography technologies [1], such as computed tomography (CT), gamma ray tomography, X-ray tomography, ultrasonic imaging, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), EIT is a real-time, noninvasive, low-cost, and portable technology which can reflect the internal structures and functions of tissues and organs [2]. Furthermore, it has shown the ability of long-term monitoring of diseases in clinical practice, such as lung function imaging [3,4], cerebral hemorrhage [5], early detection of breast cancer [6,7], and gastric emptying detection [8].…”