Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

Free water content and monitoring of healing processes of skin burns studied by microwave dielectric spectroscopy in vivo

Yoshihito Hayashi1, Nobuhiro Miura2, Naoki Shinyashiki and Shin Yagihara

Show affiliations


We have investigated the dielectric properties of human skin in vivo at frequencies up to 10 GHz using a time-domain reflectometry method with open-ended coaxial probes. Since γ-dispersion results from the reorientation of free water molecules, the free water content of skin is quantitatively determined by dielectric measurements. The free water content of finger skin increased by about 10% after soaking in 37 °C water for 30 min, and it systematically decreased again through the drying process, as expected. Thus this analytical method has been applied to the study of skin burns. The free water content of burned human cheek skin due to hydrofluoric acid was significantly lower than that of normal skin, and the burned skin recovered through the healing process. In the case of a human hand skin burn due to heat, although the free water content was almost the same as that of normal skin at the beginning, it decreased during the healing process for the first 10 days, then began to increase. Although the number of test subjects was one for each experiment, it was shown that free water content is a good indicator for evaluating skin health and can be well monitored by dielectric spectroscopy.


PACS

87.19.R- Mechanical and electrical properties of tissues and organs

07.60.Hv Refractometers and reflectometers

77.22.Ch Permittivity (dielectric function)

87.64.-t Spectroscopic and microscopic techniques in biophysics and medical physics

07.57.Pt Submillimeter wave, microwave and radiowave spectrometers; magnetic resonance spectrometers, auxiliary equipment, and techniques

Subjects

Condensed matter: electrical, magnetic and optical

Instrumentation and measurement

Medical physics

Biological physics

Dates

Issue 4 (21 February 2005)

Received 13 July 2004, in final form 10 December 2004

Published 25 January 2005



  1. Free water content and monitoring of healing processes of skin burns studied by microwave dielectric spectroscopy in vivo

    Yoshihito Hayashi et al 2005 Phys. Med. Biol. 50 599

  2. The effects of erythrocyte deformability upon hematocrit assessed by the conductance method

    Yoshihito Hayashi et al 2009 Phys. Med. Biol. 54 2395

  3. Filled ice structure of gas hydrates—a density functional study

    Toshiaki Iitaka and Toshikazu Ebisuzaki 2004 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 16 S1171

  4. Global scale climate–crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming

    David B Lobell and Christopher B Field 2007 Environ. Res. Lett. 2 014002

  5. The cubic Kugel–Khomskii model for triply degenerate t2g electrons

    Amnon Aharony et al 2005 New J. Phys. 7 49

  6. The Dual-Axis Circumstellar Environment of the Type IIn Supernova 1997eg

    Jennifer L. Hoffman et al. 2008 ApJ 688 1186

  7. Superfluid density in a superconductor with an extended d-wave gap

    Ruslan Prozorov 2008 Supercond. Sci. Technol. 21 082003

  8. Modeling the decay of entanglement for electron spin qubits in quantum dots

    F Bodoky et al 2009 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 21 395602

  9. Spectropolarimetric Evidence for a Bipolar Flow in β Lyrae

    Jennifer L. Hoffman et al. 1998 The Astronomical Journal 115 1576

  10. Spectropolarimetric Clues to the Structure and Evolutionary Status of MWC 349A

    Jill M. Meyer et al. 2002 The Astronomical Journal 123 1639

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.