Monitoring electric field induced changes in biological tissues and phantoms using ultrasound

An external electric field can induce mechanical changes depending on the amplitude, frequency and duration of the applied electric field. This study is focused on monitoring the electric/electro-kinetic effects of real biological tissues (in vitro) and gelatin phantoms with high spatial resolution. In this study, we investigated the mean of the signal spectrum at the modulation frequency, root-mean-square of the noise in the spectrum, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) during the application of low-frequency AC electric field in tissues and phantoms. Our results show that the EIMC SNR can indicate the existence of AC electric current in samples, rather than be directly related to the sample's electro-kinetic properties of the samples. We also found that the SNR varies spatially even for homogenous samples. These two features might hinder the development of the proposed method to be a viable clinical diagnostic technique.