Global and regional lung function assessment using portable electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system: clinical study

Recent development of affordable, portable and self-administrable electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system demonstrated the feasibility of using standalone EIT and subject’s anthropometrics to predict the gold standard spirometry indicators for lung-function assessment. Compared to spirometry, the system showed the advantage of providing spatial mapping of the spirometry indicators. Nevertheless, the previous study was limited to healthy subjects. Here, we recruited (N=88): 47 lung disease patients and 41 healthy controls to perform simultaneous EIT and spirometry measurements to validate the capabilities of the system. Lung disease patients include 13 interstitial lung disease (ILD), 10 asthma, 8 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 8 bronchiectasis, and 8 with other diseases including left pneumonectomy, lung cancer, lung tumor, lymphangioleiomyomatosis, motor neuron disease, heart failure and bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome. The results showed significant correlation of the predicted global spirometry indicators (p<0.0001) and significant distinguishability between most disease groups and healthy subjects demonstrating the capability of the EIT system in diagnostic screening. Furthermore, the regional mapping of the spirometry indicators is evaluated and shown to be distinct for each disease group, providing an additional dimension for medical professionals to diagnose and monitor lung disease patients.Clinical Relevance— This establishes the significance of EIT-based global and regional indicators for assessing lung function on lung disease patients.