Towards a System for Tracking Drug Delivery Using Frequency Excited Gold Nanoparticles

Abstract

Nanoparticle-based drugs are rapidly evolving to treat different conditions and have considerable potential. A new system based on the combination of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) imaging and a power amplifier with a RF coil has been developed to study the effect of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) when excited in the MHz frequency range. We show that samples including AuNPs have a temperature increase of 1–1.5 °C due to the presence of RF excitation at 13.56 MHz which provides a higher rate of change for solutions without AuNPs. They also show more than a 50% increase in conductivity in difference imaging as the result of this excitation. The change for samples without AuNPs is 40%.

Topical issues in electrical impedance tomography and bioimpedance application research

“…A new area is developing using nanoparticles in bioimpedance and EIT. Work in this emerging field on colorectal cancer and drug targeting is gathering pace (Neshatvar et al 2019). González-Díaz and Golberg (2020) investigated the sensitivity analysis of electrical bioimpedance patterns of breast cancer cells labelled with magnetic nanoparticles, forming the foundation for a biosensor of circulating tumour cells.…”