Emerging Trends and Hot Spots of Electrical Impedance Tomography Applications in Clinical Lung Monitoring

Zhe Li; Shaojie Qin; Chen Chen; Shuya Mei; Yulong Yao; Zhanqi Zhao; Wen Li; Yuxiao Deng; Yuan Gao

doi:10.3389/fmed.2021.813640

Emerging Trends and Hot Spots of Electrical Impedance Tomography Applications in Clinical Lung Monitoring

Front Med (Lausanne). 2022 Jan 31:8:813640. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.813640. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Zhe Li¹, Shaojie Qin¹, Chen Chen¹, Shuya Mei¹, Yulong Yao¹, Zhanqi Zhao^{2

3}, Wen Li¹, Yuxiao Deng¹, Yuan Gao¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Critical Care Medicine, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
² Department of Biomedical Engineering, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China.
³ Institute of Technical Medicine, Furtwangen University, Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany.

Abstract

Objective: This study explores the emerging trends and hot topics concerning applications on electrical impedance tomography (EIT) in clinical lung monitoring.

Methods: Publications on EIT applications in clinical lung monitoring in 2001-2021 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). The search strategy was "electrical impedance tomography" and "lung." CiteSpace, a VOS viewer was used to study the citation characteristics, cooperation, and keyword co-occurrence. Moreover, co-cited reference clustering, structural variation analysis (SVA), and future research trends were presented.

Results: Six hundred and thirty-six publications were included for the final analysis. The global annual publications on clinical lung monitoring gradually increased in the last two decades. Germany contributes 32.2% of total global publications. University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (84 publications, cited frequency 2,205), Physiological Measurement (105 publications, cited frequency 2,056), and Inéz Frerichs (116 articles, cited frequency 3,609) were the institution, journal, and author with the largest number of article citations in the research field. "Electrical impedance tomography" (occurrences, 304), "mechanical ventilation" (occurrences, 99), and "acute respiratory distress syndrome" (occurrences, 67) were the top most three frequent keywords, "noninvasive monitoring" (Avg, pub, year: 2008.17), and "extracorporeal membrane oxygenation" (Avg, pub, year: 2019.60) were the earliest and latest keywords. The keywords "electrical impedance tomography" (strength 7.88) and co-cited reference "Frerichs I, 2017, THORAX" (strength 47.45) had the highest burst value. "Driving pressure," "respiratory failure," and "titration" are the three keywords still maintaining a high brush value until now. The largest and smallest cluster of the co-cited references are "obstructive lung diseases" (#0, size: 97) and "lung perfusion" (#20, size: 5). Co-cited reference "Frerichs I, 2017, THORAX" (modularity change rate: 98.49) has the highest structural variability. Categories with most and least interdisciplinary crossing are "ENGINEERING" and "CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE."

Conclusions: EIT is a valuable technology for clinical lung monitoring, gradually converting from imaging techniques to the clinic. Research hot spots may continue monitoring techniques, the ventilation distribution of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and respiratory therapy strategies. More diversified lung function monitoring studies, such as lung perfusion and interdisciplinary crossing, are potentially emerging research trends.

Keywords: ARDS; EIT; bibliometric analysis; hotspot; lung.