Objectives

Bioimpedance analysis has been recently reported to characterize tissue pathologies. One of the many diabetes complications is diabetic foot disease, whose early signs are manifested at microscope level in small foot nerves endings. The experimental case study has conceived from the starting point, as already reported results show, that foot nerves endings are affected by diabetes disease. The hypothesis was that a change of foot skin electrical properties might be expected in diabetic patients. Hence, the goal was focused on finding out distinctive bioimpedance behavior of foot skin in diabetic patients.

Methods

The experiment is based on measuring and analyzing bioimpedance samples of hallux skin of thirty non-diabetic and thirty diabetic participants. The measurement method was the two-electrode technique. A measurement procedure was proposed and applied with medical supervision of the experiment participants. Bioimpedance components data were statistically analyzed figuring out electrical behavior of diabetic hallux skin.

Results

According to the analysis between data results of diabetic and non-diabetic participants, a distinctive behavior in bioimpedance phase component was observed in the frequency range of 1–20 kHz. The bioimpedance samples of diabetic participants resulted in smaller group phase averages than the corresponding of non-diabetic participants.

Conclusions

A distinctive behavior of bioimpedance phase obtained from foot skin of diabetic participants was observed along the studied frequency range. According to the case study results, it is inferred that diabetes disease has some effect on electrical properties of foot skin, particularly in the group average of the bioimpedance phase angle measured on the hallux skin area of diabetic patients.