Unmixing multi-spectral electrical impedance tomography (EIT) predicts clinical-standard controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease classification: a feasibility study

Here, we tested the feasibility of predicting CAP with multi-spectral EIT. Conductivity and CAP were acquired from nonalcoholic fatty liver disease patients using a portable EIT system and vibration-controlled transient elastography (VCTE). We then used frequency-difference conductivity and waist-over-height as prediction features to estimate CAP and found an adj. R² of 0.92. We further developed a novel prediction method by incorporating EIT spectral unmixing reconstruction and demonstrated an improvement in CAP estimation. Last, we optimized the EIT acquisition process by minimizing the total variance of the CAP estimator. Clinical Relevance: EIT can estimate clinical-standard liver disease classification. This portable EIT system is potentially cost-effective and self-administrable with short acquisition time (3 mins), while VCTE are costly and usually requires a trained personnel to operate with longer acquisition time (5-10 mins).