The synthesis of a liver tissue mimicking solution for microwave medical applications

• Published in: Biomedical physics & engineering express 2022-11, Vol.8 (6), p.65014
• Main Authors: Farhat, Iman, Farrugia, Jonathan, Farrugia, Lourdes, Bonello, Julian, Pollacco, Daphne, Sammut, Charles
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bruggemann mixture equation; dielectric properties; tissue mimicking solution; types of tissue-like phantoms
• ISSN: 2057-1976; 2057-1976
• DOI: 10.1088/2057-1976/ac8bd7

This paper presents the synthesis of a mixture solution that is equivalent to ex-vivo liver tissue dielectric characteristics between 500 MHz and 5 GHz. The mimicking solution was synthesized using concentrations of two chemicals, the solute which is referred to as the inclusion phase and the solvent, referred to as the host phase. The inclusion phase consisted of bovine serum albumin (BSA) powder and the host phase consisted of a phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution with a concentration of Triton X-100 (TX-100). The dielectric properties of these two phases were substituted into Bruggeman's two-phase mixture equation to estimate the dielectric properties of excised liver. Furthermore, the study exploits Bruggeman’s equation to investigate the impact of tissue dehydration levels on the dielectric properties of an excised tissue. The effect of dehydration has been characterised as a function of time based on the loss-on-drying technique (a substance is heated until it is completely dry). Dielectric parameters were measured as a function of frequency using the Slim Form open-ended coaxial probe at a constant room temperature of circa 25 °C. Measured dielectic data were fitted to the Cole-Cole model and good agreement with the mimicking solutions was obtained. These results indicate that these solutions can be used to model the human body phantoms for microwave medical applications.