Conjunction of Bioelectrical Impedance Spectroscopy with Archie’s Law to Characterize Scaffolds Porosity

Tissue Engineering is a multidisciplinary field that uses two and three dimensional structures called scaffolds to create a physical support for growth, gas change and nutrition of the cell. Those scaffolds can be synthetic, biological or a combination of both types of material, but the porosity, the interconnectivity of pores and pore size are among the most important physical parameters of the scaffolds. The estimation of these characteristics is still a challenge in Tissue Engineering, as it involves techniques and methods that need to be non-toxic and non-destructive, and that must operate in structures with dimensions of the order of micrometers (µm). The bioimpedance spectroscopy (bis) technique has been reported as a potential non-invasive monitoring of scaffold porosity and biological tissue growth. This work aims to study how bioimpedance spectroscopy in conjunction with Archie´s law data can be used to characterize the porosity and pore connectivity of 3D cellular structures.