Diabetic Foot Assessment using Skin Impedance in a Custom Made Sensor-sock

Christian Tronstad; Maryam Amini; Eline Olesen; Elisabeth Qvigstad; Oliver Pabst; Tormod Martinsen; Sisay M Abie; Ørjan G Martinsen; Jonny Hisdal; Trond G Jenssen; Håvard Kalvøy

doi:10.2478/joeb-2022-0019

Diabetic Foot Assessment using Skin Impedance in a Custom Made Sensor-sock

J Electr Bioimpedance. 2023 Jan 14;13(1):136-142. doi: 10.2478/joeb-2022-0019. eCollection 2022 Jan.

Authors

Christian Tronstad¹, Maryam Amini¹, Eline Olesen², Elisabeth Qvigstad^{3

4}, Oliver Pabst², Tormod Martinsen¹, Sisay M Abie⁵, Ørjan G Martinsen^{2

1}, Jonny Hisdal^{6

4}, Trond G Jenssen^{7

4}, Håvard Kalvøy¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical and Biomedical Engineering, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
² Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
³ Department of Endocrinology, Morbid Obesity and Preventive Medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
⁴ Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
⁵ Faculty of Ecology and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Oslo Ås, Norway.
⁶ Department of Vascular Surgery, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
⁷ Department of Transplantation Medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.

Abstract

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) may lead to several changes in the skin, and some of these may influence the skin impedance spectrum. In the present study we have developed a prototype solution for skin impedance spectroscopy at selected skin sites (big toe pulp, heel and toe ball) that was tested in a pilot study on five patients with DPN and five healthy controls. At the big toe, most of the controls had markedly lower impedance than the DPN group, especially in the range of 1-100 kHz. The separation between the groups seems to be weaker at the heel and weakest at the toeball. The results may indicate that monitoring of the skin impedance spectrum may be a method for detection of skin changes associated with DPN, encouraging further studies with the big toe sensor in particular.

Keywords: Skin impedance; diabetes; diabetic foot; neuropathy.

© 2022 Christian Tronstad, Maryam Amini, Eline Olesen, Elisabeth Qvigstad , Oliver Pabst, Tormod Martinsen, Sisay M. Abie, Ørjan G. Martinsen, Jonny Hisdal, Trond G. Jenssen, Håvard Kalvøy, published by Sciendo.