Dielectric Properties of Glucose Solutions in the Millimeter-Wave Range and Control of Glucose Content in Blood

Abstract

Investigations of the dielectric properties of sugar solutions, as well as blood imitators and blood, in the millimeter-wave range allow one to obtain valuable information on the possibility of real-time control of glucose concentration in blood using electromagnetic waves in the millimeter-wave ranges. These investigations are also of interest for other applications.

Detection of glucose variability in saline solutions from transmission and reflection measurements using V-band waveguides

“…This figure suggests that the real part of the relative permittivity increases with concentration while the imaginary part decreases with concentration. This dependence agrees with the results reported in [8] and [5], but not with measurements using a plane-parallel matching plate made of a low-loss dielectric reported in [6], where the real part of the relative permittivity decreases, contrary to our results. In order to reduce the possibility of error in our simulations, only the higher glucose concentrations in the range 1 wt% -5 wt% were used in the simulations presented later in the paper.…”

“…Significantly higher sensitivity to glucose variations was observed for transmission data, particularly in the frequency ranges of 59 -64 GHz and 69 -73 GHz. This observation is of critical importance as it suggests that processing transmission data can be much more effective in this frequency range relative to reflection data used in previous work [6].…”

“…Higher microwave frequencies have also been studied in [4,6,7,19], but in a different context than in the present work. In particular, [19] considers both reflection and transmission data utilizing various sensing methods, but uses measurements only up to 40 GHz and higher minimum glucose concentrations (down to 0.15 wt% only) compared to the present work.…”

“…Second, the electromagnetic behaviour of materials in that frequency range is not as established as in lower frequency ranges (below 10 GHz). This is particularly true for biological liquids were limited results are available in the literature [4][5][6][7][8].…”

“…Among the various candidate technologies, the use of electromagnetic (EM) waves (e.g. optical methods studied in [10][11][12]) and particularly microwaves has shown promise in detecting changes in the electrical properties of blood plasma as a function of glucose concentration [4,6,7,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. These results have motivated the present study towards the development of a non-invasive glucose monitoring system using the 50 -75 GHz mm-wave band.…”