ANALYSIS OF AN OPEN-ENDED COAXIAL METHOD FOR DETECTION COLORECTAL CANCER OBTAINED THROUGH COLONOSCOPY BIOPSIES. PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Aims Many technological advances have been made to optimize the detection of colorectal cancer lesions. Research has shown that the electromagnetic properties of healthy and cancerous tissues differ in many biological tissues. We aim at analyzing these differences between healthy and pathological colon tissues gathered from colonoscopy biopsies.

Methods The dielectric constant and the conductivity of healthy and pathological colorectal samples of 70 patients were analyzed using the open-ended coaxial technique and were later correlated with their pathology results. Since these properties depend on multiple factors like tissue’s temperature, system calibration and the patient itself, polyps were analyzed by computing the difference between the healthy and the pathological samples within each patient. Measurements were performed on adenocarcinomas (CRC), adenomas without dysplasia, adenomas with low-grade dysplasia, adenomas with high-grade dysplasia, hyperplastic and hamartomatous polyps.

Results The differences obtained in dielectric constant between CRC and healthy pairs are higher than in the rest of pathologies. Within the frequency region where larger differences appear, the median of this difference is 4.8 units. Differences in conductivity are lower, having a median of 2 units. By selecting a threshold in the difference of dielectric constant that maximizes the diagnostic capability of CRC, the system showed a sensitivity of 75% and a specificity of 89% for detecting this disease.

Conclusions Results have shown that measurements of electromagnetic properties could aid in the detection of colorectal pathologies. The variability of the results is quite large, and hence the system should be improved prior to a potential implementation.