Department of Medical Informatics, School of Biomedical Engineering, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
Department of Equipment, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Phys Eng Sci Med. 2023 Jun;46(2):609-621. doi: 10.1007/s13246-023-01236-5. Epub 2023 Mar 13.
Open-ended coaxial probe method is one of the most common modalities in measuring dielectric properties (DPs) of biological tissues. Due to the significant differences between the tumors and normal tissues in DPs, the technique can be used to detect skin cancer in the early stage. Although various studies have been reported, systematic assessment is in urgent need to advance it to clinical applications, for its parameters interactions and detecting limitations remained unclear. In this study, we aim to provide a comprehensive examination of this method, including the minimum detectable tumor size by using a three-layer skin model via simulation and demonstrated that open-ended coaxial probe method can be used for detection of early-stage skin cancer. The smallest detecting size are subject to different subtypes: for BCC, inside the skin is 0.5 mm radius × 0.1 mm height; for SCC, inside the skin is 1.4 mm × 1.3 mm in radius and height; the smallest distinguishing size of BCC is 0.6 mm × 0.7 mm in radius and height; for SCC is 1.0 mm × 1.0 mm in radius and height; for MM is 0.7 mm × 0.4 mm in radius and height. The experiment results showed that sensitivity was affected by tumor dimension, probe size, skin height, and cancer subtype. The probe is more sensitive to cylinder tumor radius than height growing on the surface of the skin while the smallest size probe is the most sensitive among the working probes. We provide a detailed systematic evaluation of the parameters employed in the method for further applications.
开式同轴探头法是测量生物组织介电特性 (DPs) 的最常用方法之一。由于肿瘤和正常组织在 DPs 方面存在显著差异，该技术可用于早期检测皮肤癌。尽管已经有各种研究报告，但为了将其推进到临床应用，迫切需要进行系统评估，因为其参数相互作用和检测局限性仍不清楚。在这项研究中，我们旨在对该方法进行全面检查，包括通过模拟使用三层皮肤模型测量最小可检测肿瘤大小，并证明开式同轴探头方法可用于早期皮肤癌的检测。最小检测尺寸取决于不同的亚型：对于 BCC，在皮肤内为 0.5 毫米半径×0.1 毫米高度；对于 SCC，在皮肤内为 1.4 毫米×1.3 毫米的半径和高度；BCC 的最小区分尺寸为 0.6 毫米×0.7 毫米的半径和高度；对于 SCC，半径和高度为 1.0 毫米×1.0 毫米；对于 MM，半径和高度为 0.7 毫米×0.4 毫米。实验结果表明，敏感性受肿瘤尺寸、探头尺寸、皮肤高度和癌症亚型的影响。与在皮肤表面生长的探头高度相比，探头对圆柱状肿瘤半径的敏感性更高，而工作探头中最小尺寸的探头最敏感。我们为进一步应用提供了对该方法中使用的参数的详细系统评估。
