Towards accurate microwave characterization of tissues: Sensing depth analysis of open-ended coaxial probes with ex vivo rat breast and skin tissues

Dielectric properties of biological materials are commonly characterized with open-ended coaxial probes due to the broadband and non-destructive measurement capabilities. Recently, potential diagnostics applications of the technique have been investigated. Although the technique can successfully classify the tissues with different dielectric properties, the classification accuracy can be improved for tissues with similar dielectric properties. Increase in classification accuracy can be achieved by addressing the error sources. One well-known error source contributing to low measurement accuracy is tissue heterogeneity. To mitigate this error source, there is a need define the probe sensing depth. Such knowledge can enable application-specific probe selection or design. The sensing depth can also be used as an input to the classification algorithms which can potentially improve the tissue classification accuracy. Towards this goal, this work investigates the sensing depth of a commercially available 2.2 mm aperture diameter probe with double-layered configurations using ex vivo rat breast and skin tissues. It was concluded that the dielectric property contrast between the heterogeneous tissue components has an effect on the sensing depth. Also, a membrane layer (between 0.4–0.8 mm thickness) on the rat wet skin tissue and breast tissue will potentially affect the dielectric property measurement results by 52% to 84%.