Optimization of parameters for skin cancer diagnostics using reflected terahertz radiation

In this paper, the reflected THz radiation from the healthy skin and skin affected by cancer was analyzed. For that purpose, finite difference time domain (FDTD) method for electromagnetic wave propagation was adjusted and applied to simulate THz radiation propagation according to the human skin. Here, radiation from 0.1 to 1 THz was considered. Multi-layer skin model was applied with given electric parameters for each skin layer. The parameters used were conductivity and dielectric constant. The values of parameters depend on frequency and highly depend on whether the skin is healthy or not. It was found that the intensity of reflected radiation from the cancerous skin is greater than the intensity of reflected radiation from the healthy skin, and that the difference between these two intensities increases with increasing frequency. It was also obtained that the distribution of reflected radiation is similar to the distribution of incident radiation, while absorption of transmitted radiation is very small. These results obtained within this paper are significant because they indicate that the reflected radiation from the skin could be used for skin cancer diagnostics.