Design of mm Wave Sensor for the Prognosis of Burn Wounds Severity Using Arm Tissue Phantom

Recent developments in wearable and flexible electronics coupled with Internet of Things have created new developments in smart healthcare yet chronic wound monitoring still receives little attention from researchers. Accurate and early diagnoses of chronic skin wounds yield numerous benefits for the patient. mmWave devices monitor skin wounds through variations in S-parameters with our research focusing on S11. Healthy skin and burnt tissues have different dielectric properties. The variations of these dielectric properties cause changes in S<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</inf> which can be seen on an S<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</inf> plot as a frequency shift. Tissue Mimicking Material (TMM), also known as Tissue Phantoms, have been created to replicate the dielectric properties of skin, fat, muscle, and bone tissue. These phantoms were stacked on top of each other to create an arm tissue phantom. Numerous arm tissue phantoms were created, and they included: healthy tissue (no burns), first-degree burn, second-degree burn, and third-degree burn. This was done by burning the skin tissue phantoms to various degrees. After these arm tissue phantoms were synthesized and burned, the values of S<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</inf> were measured and recorded from two different patch antennas that were resonant at 18 GHz. Results of these S<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</inf> plots show that there is a frequency shift between the health, first-, second-and third-degree burn tissue phantom.