Microwave phantoms for craniotomy follow-up probe development

A novel phantom for skull implant diagnostics is presented in this paper. Specially designed three layer phantom is designed for osseointegration analysis after craniotomy using 2.4 GHz microwave probe. The phantom represents skin, skull and brain, and defects are made in the skull with the dielectric profile variation of realistic implants. The extreme dielectric constant variation of implant and bone gives a high degree of discrimination in resonant frequency. The presented craniotomy phantom is very useful for designing antennas for monitoring skull healing.