Towards the Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing (ECIS) Technique as a Monitor of Effects in Magnetic Field Exposure Experiments In Vitro

The Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing (ECIS) technique has been know since the 1980's, and it is based on the measurement of the electrical impedance spectroscopy of a cellular culture in vitro grown as a confluent monolayer of cells over planar gold electrodes photolithographed on a glass substrate. Perhaps the main advantage of the method over biochemical ones, is that it allows for real-time monitoring of cell adhesion changes, for instance, as the cells are exposed to some external agent. In this work we present our progress in putting together a low cost ECIS system for monitoring changes upon the exposure of a cell culture to low-frequency magnetic fields; we report on many technical details and difficulties that we found along the way; and we discuss the results of our first test of the system with actual cell cultures. Future work is discussed.