Permittivity measurements for the quantification of edema in human brain tissue - Open-ended coaxial and coplanar probes for fast tissue scanning

In an autopsy the quantification of edema in brain tissue can help to verify the cause of death, especially when there is no visible evidence, as for the sudden infant death syndrome and shaken impact syndrome. However, until now there is no standardized procedure in forensic medicine for the determination of the humidity content in parenchymatous organs. Thus, the aim of our work is to develop a low-cost measuring system for fast and simple quantification of the humidity content in human brain tissue. Therefore, the quantitative dependency of the relative permittivity from the humidity content is utilized. Here we show measurements of the tissue permittivity using a new coplanar probe designed for fast scanning of different brain regions. The results are compared with permittivity measurements from a coaxial measuring chamber presented at IEEE Sensors 2013, measurements with an open-ended coaxial probe and reference measurements from a commercially available moisture analyzer.