In vivo bioimpedance changes during haemorrhagic and ischaemic stroke in rats: towards 3D stroke imaging using electrical impedance tomography.

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) could be used as a portable non-invasive means to image the development of ischaemic stroke or haemorrhage. The purpose of this study was to examine if this was possible using time difference imaging, in the anesthetised rat using 40 spring-loaded scalp electrodes with applied constant currents of 50-150 μA at 2 kHz. Impedance changes in the largest 10% of electrode combinations were  -12.8%  ±  12.0% over the first 10 min for haemorrhage and  +46.1%  ±  37.2% over one hour for ischaemic stroke (mean  ±  SD, n  =  7 in each group). The volume of the pathologies, assessed by tissue section and histology post-mortem, was 12.6 μl  ±  17.6 μl and 12.6 μl  ±  17.6 μl for haemorrhage and ischaemia respectively. In time difference EIT images, there was a correspondence with the pathology in 3/7 cases of haemorrhage and none of the ischaemic strokes. Although the net impedance changes were physiologically reasonable and consistent with expectations from the literature, it was disappointing that it was not possible to obtain reliable EIT images. The reason for this are not clear, but probably include confounding effects of secondary ischaemia for haemorrhage and tissue and cerebrospinal fluid shifts for the stroke model. With this method, it does not appear that EIT with scalp electrodes is yet ready for clinical use.