Breast Imaging Using Electrical Impedance Tomography: Correlation of Quantitative Assessment with Visual Interpretation

Background: Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a new non-invasive, mobile screening method whichdoes not use ionizing radiation to the human breast; allows conducting quantitative assessment of the imagesbesides the visual interpretation. The aim of this study was to correlate the quantitative assessment and visualinterpretation of breast electrical impedance tomographs and associated factors. Materials and
Methods: Onehundred and fifty mammography patients above 40 years and undergoing EIT were chosen using convenientsampling. Visual interpretation of the images was carried out by a radiologist with minimum of three yearsexperience using the breast imaging - electrical impedance (BI-EIM) classification for detection of abnormalities.A set of thirty blinded EIT images were reinterpreted to determine the intra-rater reliability using kappa.Quantitative assessment was by comparison of the breast average electric conductivity with the norm andcorrelations with visual interpretation of the images were determined using Chi-square. One-way ANOVA wasused to compare the mean electrical conductivity between groups and t-test was used for comparisons withpre-existing Caucasians statistics. Independent t-tests were applied to compare the mean electrical conductivityof women with factors like exogenous hormone use and family history of breast cancer.
Results: The meanelectrical conductivity of Malaysian women was significantly lower than that of Caucasians (p<0.05). Quantitativeassessment of electrical impedance tomography was significantly related with visual interpretation of imagesof the breast (p<0.05).
Conclusions: Quantitative assessment of electrical impedance tomography images wassignificantly related with visual interpretation.