# Classifying Oral Lesions with Chip-on-tip Electrical Impedance Sensing

> **NIH NIH R21** · DARTMOUTH COLLEGE · 2021 · $191,061

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
No real-time quantitative devices are clinically used to assess oral lesions during routine examination, making
in-clinic diagnostic and longitudinal monitoring challenging. Instead, lesions are evaluated through visual
inspection and then histopathological analysis of tissue samples extracted during biopsy. Identifying
premalignant and malignant oral lesions early is critical to ensuring effective treatment is provided to patients
with malignancies. Oral cancer currently has one of the lowest 5-year survival rates (50% or less) among major
cancer types, largely due to the challenges in identifying premalignant and malignant lesions early. Clearly, a
real-time in-clinic device able to classify oral lesions as benign, premalignant, or malignant has the potential to
provide immediate impact to patient care. Significantly different electrical property signatures have been
observed between benign and malignant tissues in a variety of organs, including tongue; since the bioelectrical
properties are so dependent on tissue architecture and morphology, we hypothesize that sensing and imaging
these properties in the context of oral lesions will enable us to accurately characterize and classify
morphologically-different benign, premalignant, and malignant oral lesions. We have developed an endoscopic
electrical impedance imaging (EII) device for use in intraoperative surgical margin assessment that we aim to
optimize for in-clinic oral lesion assessment. We aim to take the significant step of translating our extensive
experience in impedance imaging to develop an oral lesion imaging device that can be deployed safely, and in
the clinic, to provide real-time feedback regarding oral lesion classification. We propose constructing a novel
chip-on-tip EII probe to sense and image at near microscopic resolution oral lesions in an effort to provide
clinicians with real-time, accurate classification of oral lesion pathology that can be used for diagnostic and
longitudinal monitoring purposes. The probe will be evaluated on a series of in vivo human oral lesions and
compared with histopathological analysis of biopsy samples. The low-cost of a device such as this makes it an
ideal technology for low-resource settings and the safety and real-time capabilities of the system make it ideal
for continuously following lesions.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10287597
- **Project number:** 1R21DE031095-01
- **Recipient organization:** DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
- **Principal Investigator:** Ryan Joseph Halter
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $191,061
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-07-01 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10287597

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10287597, Classifying Oral Lesions with Chip-on-tip Electrical Impedance Sensing (1R21DE031095-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10287597. Licensed CC0.

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