Millimeter-wave imaging and near-field spectroscopy for burn wound assessment
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Damaris Hecht
,
Ingrid Ullmann
Abstract
Diagnostic applications for skin in the microwave range have developed significantly in recent years, due the non-invasiveness of these applications and their ability to assess tissue water content. Despite their capabilities, however, there is still no appropriate clinically applicable microwave tool for the assessment of burn wounds. A common practice is the visual inspection and evaluation of burns by the doctor, which is a challenging task even for experienced medical professionals. An incorrect assessment can have far-reaching consequences, such as unnecessary surgery or surgery that is necessary but omitted. In this paper, two different approaches of millimeter-wave burn wound assessment are presented: millimeter-wave imaging and near-field spectroscopy. For imaging, a MIMO sparse array was used to assess ex vivo burns on porcine skin in the frequency range of 70–80 GHz. With a resonant millimeter-wave near-field probe, reflective spectroscopy at individual sites of an ex vivo burn on porcine skin in the frequency range of 75–110 GHz was performed. The results showed individual advantages and drawbacks for both approaches, with surprising benefits of the spectroscopic method. Nevertheless, both approaches were shown to be suitable for clinical usage in diagnosing burns.
Funding source: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Award Identifier / Grant number: VO 1453/19-2
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Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.
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Research funding: We would like to thank Rohde & Schwarz very much for providing the QAR radar scanner to our institute. The presented studies were supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within the priority program electromagnetic sensors for life sciences (ESSENCE) under grant VO 1453/19–2.
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Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this article.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Research Articles
- Ultrasensitive marker-free biomolecular THz-detection for tumor-related analytics
- Terahertz subwavelength sensing with bio-functionalized germanium fano-resonators
- Concepts for millimeter wave-based detection of African trypanosomes in field-compatible liquid systems
- Millimeter-wave imaging and near-field spectroscopy for burn wound assessment
- A compact breath gas sensor system based on terahertz/millimeter-wave gas spectroscopy
- Evolution of a theranostic applicator for microwave ablation treatment
- Towards a fully integrated sub-THz microfluidic sensor platform for dielectric spectroscopy
- Towards single-cell pulsed EPR using VCO-based EPR-on-a-chip detectors
- Label-free single-cell counting and characterization in the GHz-range
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Research Articles
- Ultrasensitive marker-free biomolecular THz-detection for tumor-related analytics
- Terahertz subwavelength sensing with bio-functionalized germanium fano-resonators
- Concepts for millimeter wave-based detection of African trypanosomes in field-compatible liquid systems
- Millimeter-wave imaging and near-field spectroscopy for burn wound assessment
- A compact breath gas sensor system based on terahertz/millimeter-wave gas spectroscopy
- Evolution of a theranostic applicator for microwave ablation treatment
- Towards a fully integrated sub-THz microfluidic sensor platform for dielectric spectroscopy
- Towards single-cell pulsed EPR using VCO-based EPR-on-a-chip detectors
- Label-free single-cell counting and characterization in the GHz-range
- Self-assembled sensor-in-a-tube as a versatile tool for label-free EIS viability investigation of cervical cancer cells
