Study on the effective measurement area of an open-ended coaxial probe for the dielectric measurement of biological tissues

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The dielectric properties of tissues are very important physical factors for the investigation and application of bio-electromagnetism. However, the size of the active sample tissue is usually limited in actual measurement, making it difficult to meet the requirements of the existing high-frequency measurement methods, thus influencing the measurement results. OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to systematically investigate the various factors influencing the effective measurement area of the open-ended coaxial probe, including the design size of the probe and the dielectric properties of the object to be measured. METHODS: The simplified material mixing model, in which several types of materials were set as the material under test (MUT) and the perfect conductor (PEC) was set as the specific material, was used in the simulation to study the effective measurement area of eight types of probes with different sizes for the dielectric measurement of different MUTs. Different concentrations of NaCl solutions and three types of coaxial probes were used in the actual measurement to verify the simulation results. RESULTS: According to the simulation results, the effective measurement area, especially the effective measurement radius, was closely related to the outer conductor radius of the probe. The effective measurement area of the probe decreased when the outer conductor radius of the probe reduced. Moreover, the change in the effective measurement area of the probe was independent of the MUT when the cross-sectional size of the probe was smaller than a certain threshold value. The experimental results also confirmed this conclusion. CONCLUSION: According to the research results, the independent variable dimension could be effectively reduced and the modeling difficulty was reduced when the analysis model of the effective measurement area of the probe was established.