In vitro investigation of the biological effects associated with human dermal fibroblasts exposed to 2.52 THz radiation

Abstract

Human dermal fibroblasts exhibit comparable cellular and molecular effects when exposed to THz radiation and hyperthermic stress. These findings suggest that radiation at 2.52 THz generates primarily thermal effects in mammalian cells. Therefore, we conclude that THz-induced bioeffects may be accurately predicted with conventional thermal damage models.

Invited Review Article: Current State of Research on Biological Effects of Terahertz Radiation

“…First, they provide high levels of average output power, with values on the order of 100 mW at many frequency lines. Notably, these power values are the highest levels of all commercially available bench-top THz sources [43,[119][120][121][122] (Fig. 5a).…”

“…Exposure chambers are either custom built using stainless steel or plexiglass materials, or they are designed using conventional cell culture incubators. Figure 5b and c contain images of a retrofitted chamber using a cell culture incubator, and a custom-designed exposure chamber, respectively [120,145]. Chambers generally consist of an external heater, temperature controller, gas control and purging system, sapphire windows for IR measurements, operator control area, and input ports for THz radiation.…”

“…c. Macroscopic image of in vitro THz exposure setup: FIR THz laser source, CO 2 laser spectrometer, temperature-controlled exposure chamber, and electric heater. (Modified and reprinted with permission from [120] generating a milliwatt of power at higher frequencies [111]. In fact, recent data indicates that the output power of electronic sources drops off between 1/f 2 and 1/f 3 with increases in frequency [111].…”

Terahertz pulsed imaging in vivo: measurements and processing methods

“…22 However, heating effects could still be an issue, and so safe levels of exposure have been set in the milliwatt regime. [23][24][25] This level is orders of magnitude above the typical powers of pulsed terahertz systems, where common average output powers are reported to be on the order of 100 nW. 26 Intermolecular bonds, such as hydrogen bonds, have been found to have resonances extending into the terahertz region.…”

Simulating the Response of Terahertz Radiation to Basal Cell Carcinoma Using Double Debye model and FDTD Method

“…Work by Pickwell et al, has demonstrated that the terahertz response of normal human skin can be modeled in much the same way as water using a double Debye equation [4,5], furthermore, they also extract Debye parameters (Table 1) from the refractive index and absorption coefficient. Recently, Heh using the Debye parameters and alternating-direction-implicit Finite-difference timedomain (FADI-FDTD) modeled the interaction of terahertz pulse with healthy skin and basal cell carcinoma (BCC) [6].Recent studies [7,8] draw the attention of the potential therapeutic effect of THz in the field of cancer, which necessitates a better understanding of the interaction of terahertz pulse with healthy skin and BCC. …”