Very-high-frequency methodology for biological tissue discrimination

This paper demonstrates the practical possibilities of a high-frequency setup to discriminate between different types of biological tissues. The final objective is to study the detection of tumors with technologies that enable an accurate identification of the areas to be removed, thus reducing the loss of healthy tissue. For this purpose, a microwave transmission-based antenna sample analysis system has been designed. Moreover, the biological sample is enclosed in a dielectric package, such that its dielectric constant is much lower than that of the biological samples under study. The working frequency is located in the vicinity of the microwave Ka-band. This is because this frequency band maintains a good compromise between the mechanical dimensions of the waveguide and the skin depth of penetration. A complete study on analyzing the system´s sensitivity against the versatility of the different biological samples has been done. It was proved that the proposed high frequency measurement system is able to distinguish the different separation profiles in a complex sample of tissue, yielding very promising results.