Skin monitoring and diagnostics: towards a wearable low-cost system

Abstract

Wearable technology in healthcare refers to medical devices for real-time monitoring of a wide variety of biomedical parameters of the human body. The Health 4.0 scenario has led to the rapid development of these systems in all fields of medicine. However, a wearable non-invasive device for skin health monitoring for skin hydration control or cancer prevention is still an open challenge. In this regard, this paper addresses the design and the implementation of a low-cost portable system for skin diagnostics purposes which is based-on microwave reflectometry technique. For this purpose, a specific sensing element (SE), connected to a miniaturized vector network analyzer (m-VNA) has been designed and assessed for the optimal detection of the variation of the dielectric properties of the skin. The proposed system has been validated, first, through full wave simulations, then, directly on human skin, demonstrating a good potential for achieving a fully wearable system for skin monitoring and diagnostics.