Broadband Microwave Dielectric Property Comparison of Human Fetal Osteoblastic (hFOB) and Osteosarcoma (SaOS-2) Cell Lines

Dielectric properties of biological tissues are mostly studied in order to develop microwave-based diagnosis and treatment methods for variety of applications including but not limited to cancer detection/treatment, detection of alzheimer diseases, and blood glucose monitoring. Reported studies generally focuses on tabulating the dielectric property discrepancy between the diseased and normal tissues on a macro level. For example, the measured dielectric properties of malignant tumor tissues are higher than those of normal tissues. Possibly, one factor contributing to such discrepancy is the amount of water contained in the malignant tumor tissues. However, the sources of dielectric property discrepancy between the malignant and normal tissues remains unexplored. This study investigates whether the dielectric property discrepancy is consistent on cell level between the malignant and normal cell samples to identify sources for dielectric property discrepancy in tissues and to enable microwave pathological applications. To this end, the dielectric properties of human fetal osteoblastic (hFOB) and osteosarcoma (SaOS-2) cell lines were measured in the frequency range of 500 MHz to 10 GHz using an open-ended coaxial probe. The measurements were conducted on pellet form and suspension form of cells, since there is no consensus on the protocol of cell line broadband dielectric property measurement. The discrepancy between hFOB and SaOS-2 cell suspensions at the whole measurement frequency are 0.1480% and 2.8267% for relative permittivity and conductivity, respectively. In pellet measurements, calculated percent discrepancy are to 2.1895% for relative permittivity and 3.6766% for conductivity.