Take-Home Messages

  • This paper describes neurophysiological, psychophysical, and behavioral observations from laboratory studies involving human and animal subjects.
  • Absorption of a single microwave pulse impinging on the head may be perceived as an acoustic zip, click, or knocking sound.
  • A train of microwave pulses may be sensed as an audible buzz, chirp, or tune by humans.
  • Mechanistic studies show absorption of microwave pulses by soft tissues in the head launches a thermoelastic pressure wave that travels in the brain
  • Depending on the power of the impinging microwave pulses, the level of induced sound pressure could be considerably above the threshold of auditory perception.
  • The microwave auditory effects and associated pressure waves could potentially render damage to brain tissues to cause lethal or nonlethal injury.

Take-Home Messages

  • The proposed system uses a 4-antenna wearable MIMO near-field radio frequency (RF) system to perform detailed sensing of the heart and vasculature motion to enable biometric identification.
  • The system demonstrates > 99% identification accuracy in a 20 subject human study and demonstrates a promising experimental and feature extraction method for expanded future studies.
  • The main application of this work is implementation of a novel dynamic biometric based on immutable characteristics of heart motion for remote work authentication or cross-border identification where both highly permanent biometrics and ease of acquisition are required.
  • This is the first work that demonstrates biometric identification with near-field RF cardiac sensing, and the most detailed analysis of the capabilities of wearable MIMO near-field RF cardiac sensing to date.
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  • Turning the metallic stent of a heart valve prosthesis into an antenna to establish a robust RFID-based trans-cardiac communication link with no-battery onboard.
  • By means of a conformable thin coupler loop placed in proximity of one cusp of the stent, a reliable backscattering link is established notwithstanding potential user-specific placement as well as misalignments with the external reader antenna.
  • The wireless monitoring of the health status of a heart valve prosthesis, concerning infection, prosthetic endocarditis, and structural deterioration.
  • The valve is equipped with communication capabilities by means of an add-on coupled to the metallic wireframe, without hindering the structural stability of the valve itself. The major electromagnetic challenge was the depth of the implantable device at 7 cm within a highly lossy environment dominated by muscles and blood.
  • The wireless and zero-battery trans-cardiac communication link was studied both numerically and experimentally giving evidence of promising advancements in the scenario of augmented implantable medical devices.
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  • Genetic algorithm-based array thinning technique has been employed with hyperthermia treatment planning for our 434 MHz phased array breast applicator to reduce hardware requirements of the hyperthermia treatment delivery system.
  • With appropriately engineered phased array applicator and array thinning technique, selective heating ability can be retained with up to 50% reduction in the number of active channels in the phased array microwave source.
  • Targeted delivery of hyperthermia treatment to locally advanced breast cancer.
  • The ability of our 434 MHz phased applicator to deliver targeted heat to locally advanced breast cancer is demonstrated numerically and experimentally using thinned array synthesis which is a significant outcome for the development of cost-effective hyperthermia treatment delivery system with reduced hardware resources.
  • The proposed method has been verified numerically on 25 breast cancer models derived from patient magnetic resonance image dataset and experimentally on two heterogeneous anatomically realistic breast phantoms for targeted heating at five varied target locations.
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  • This study presents a novel numerical spatial averaging technique for the extraction of the absorbed power density (Sab) on a conformal control surface on a realistic tissue-equivalent electromagnetic (EM) model to accurately assess the EM exposure above 6 GHz.
  • Sab is up to ∼20% greater on conformal surfaces where realistic tissue morphological features are considered, e.g., the frontal surface of an ear, compared to flat models ubiquitous in dosimetry research.
  • The analysis presented in the study is focused on quantifying the superficial exposure of the human ear as it is among the most irradiated body parts in common exposure scenarios in terms of two different definitions of Sab at 26 and 60 GHz – frequencies upcoming for the 5G standard for broadband cellular networks.
  • The findings demonstrate a strong effect of irregularities in the geometry of the averaging surface, e.g., curvature – either convex or concave, sharp edges, deformities, etc., on the spatial distribution of EM power and the averaged dosimetric quantities, i.e. Sab, whose accuracy is of utmost importance especially at millimeter wave range.
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  • We have devised an attachable DC coil array to feasibly lower the static magnetic field variation such as in prefrontal lobes and mitigate intra-voxel dephasing, while causing trivial RF interference to MR signal excitation and acquisition.
  • The distortion correction achieved by the proposed technique can therefore, enhance the signals and facilitate the research that focuses on prefrontal regions.
  • The proposed device is user-friendly and compatible with conventional or advanced RF coil in MRI.
  • The proposed technique can potentially address the problem whether one brain area is directing another. It may also open up major avenues for studies of memory (short-term or long-term working memory), social behaviors (the way we take sensory input and interpret it in the context of some social interaction), motor behaviors (facial and hand gestures during communications), eye movement and attention (when someone pay attention to something, the eyes focus on that too).
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  • The design and optimization of asymmetric tapered solenoid coil is proposed in this work for Halbach based Magnetic Resonance Imaging systems (MRI) to achieve high coil sensitivity and acceptable inhomogeneity (∼20%) within 190 mm diameter of spherical volume (DSV).
  • The optimized coils using single-turn (A1) and multi-turn (A2) winding approaches manifest an increase in B1 -field strength of 33% and 39% and an increase in inhomogeneity of 10% and 13% respectively, compared to a reference solenoid.
  • The proposed RF coils with enhanced sensitivity can contribute to an increase in SNR in a portable MRI system which has low field and low SNR.
  • The proposed optimization method can be applied to designs of shape optimized asymmetric solenoid coils for a defined field of view (FoV).
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  • An exposure system for the human back was developed at frequencies of 28 GHz.
  • The whole-body average specific absorption rate was 0.35 W/kg, which is close to the limit for occupational exposure (0.4 W/kg) in the international guidelines and standard.
  • The exposure system is used to assess the temperature rise in the back of the human subject, as well as the time-domain thermophysiological response of the subjects in future work.
  • This exposure system is the first one for whole-body exposure assessment at frequencies higher than 6 GHz with validation by computation.
  • An experimental study using the exposure system would provide the scientific rationale when revising the international guidelines and standard for human protection.
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  • A novel planar RF sensor resonating at 2 GHz (ISM frequency band) with radially arranged vias is proposed for the dielectric characterization of high permittivity samples such as human blood plasma, simulated body fluids, etc.
  • The proposed RF sensor is designed, fabricated, and tested for the detection of sodium ion imbalance in the human body.
  • A detailed numerical simulation of the body fluid is carried out to analyze the transmission coefficient and the loss tangent to closely observe the effect of sodium imbalance in blood plasma.
  • The target AUT (Analyte Under Test) in the present situation is the human blood plasma, which is mimicked by the Simulated Body Fluid (SBF) based on the dielectric and other material properties similar to the human blood plasma.
  • Development of the proposed RF sensor at the ISM band is capable of detecting increased sodium ion concentrations in SBF mimicking human blood plasma.
  • The proposed scheme may effectively be utilized for the in-situ testing of body fluids, by utilizing a specially designed channel embedded in the substrate of the developed sensor for efficient interaction between the sensor and the AUT.
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  • his paper innovatively built an in-vitro heart beat measurement system to analyze the effect of the cardiac cycle on galvanic coupling conductive intracardiac communication (GCCIC) under the quasi-static electric field.
  • We show that the blood volume variations during the cardiac cycle and the frequency variations have a significant effect on the channel gain.
  • The target biological and medical application is to design leadless multi-chamber pacemakers based on GCCIC in the quasi-static electric field regime capable of adaptively compensating for channel gain fluctuations caused by blood volume changes during the cardiac cycle.
  • The breakthrough of this work is to design a control scheme to realize the blood volume variations with the cardiac cycle in the in-vitro heart using peristaltic pumps.
  • In addition to using the in-vitro heart beat measurement system, we also established a dynamic heart model and performed electromagnetic simulations to explore the intracardiac channel characteristics of the cardiac cycle, which is generally consistent with the experimental results.
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  • Based on the variation of dielectric properties of biological tissues, electrical impedance myography (EIM) applies a weak alternating current signal of known frequency to obtain muscle impedance parameters (including resistance and reactance), combined with long short-term memory (LSTM) networks to establish a nonlinear mapping between EIM feature parameters and handgrip force, which can be used for muscle rehabilitation training and prosthetic control.
  • The feature parameters fusing resistance (R) and reactance (X) are the optimal input for the handgrip force prediction model, and the anterior forearm muscles are the preferred impedance measurement position.
  • This study aims to investigate the effects of different measurement positions and feature parameters on the results of handgrip force prediction and to provide a new reference and implementation scheme for muscle rehabilitation training and prosthetic control.
  • This paper expands a new direction for the application of EIM by analyzing the effects of muscle measurement positions and impedance feature parameters on grip force prediction.
  • The performance of the handgrip force prediction model will further improve by fusing more feature parameters or trying the impedance measurement based on electrode array.
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  • The main motivation of this work is to assess feasibility of microwave-based tools in dermatological diagnostics, relying on an inherent reported dielectric contrast between malign and benign lesions.
  • Our initial step is the construction and testing of stable skin phantoms, designed to represent the skin anatomically and in the dielectric sense, within the microwave range and for a range of geometrical configurations.
  • The phantoms include inexpensive materials that mimic skin, and cancerous tissue, within the frequency range of interest that is between 0.5 and 26.5 GHz: oil, gelatin, deionized water and formaldehyde fulfils aforementioned qualities and are used in the fabrication of phantoms.
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  • This work shows that hybrid coils can be employed toward improved resolution and accuracy in MRI images of the human brain by the ability of the coil system to adapt to the head size of the individual patient.
  • A novel RF coil phased array featuring semi-flexible bowing coil elements was demonstrated, allowing for better fitting coil arrays, leading to more accurate, higher SNR images.
  • This work has wide reaching applications in RF coils for high resolution magnetic resonance imaging of the human brain.
  • It is demonstrated that coil arrays containing hybrid elements, half flexible and half rigid, are possible and that combining these two methods, allows an array to benefit from the advantages of each, while avoiding their distinct drawbacks.
  • We conclude that bowing array elements present a viable solution to the proposed hybrid rigid-flexible coil arrays.
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  • MIMO and phased array are integrated on a 77GHz FMCW radar where mmWave beams can be steered towards different directions to monitor multiple target subjects and the signal-to-noise ratio is boosted by fully utilizing all transmitting antennas and receiving antennas of the radar.
  • Grounded on the multiple transmitting antenna-receiving antenna pairs and analog beamforming, phased-MIMO radar provides not only a higher angular resolution but also a higher SNR.
  • Phased-MIMO provides an appealing solution to track the health status of multiple people in many indoor venues (e.g., a crowded hospital room).
  • Phased-MIMO radar is capable to localize multiple target subjects and extract echoed mmWave signals of each individual subject to monitor the corresponding vital signal.
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  • Significant interest exists in the potential of electric field (EF) application to be developed into a technology to direct axon growth and neuronal regeneration. This article pairs ex-vivo experiments with an equivalent computational model of the rat optic nerve to predict more effective electrode pair combinations that could be used to stimulate the optic nerve to direct neuronal regeneration.
  • Our results indicate that the use of Pt electrodes at both source and ground positions leads to the greatest voltage gradient along the optic nerve. Moreover, a larger ground electrode wrapped around the optic chiasm was predicted to increase the voltage gradient along the nerve by almost two-fold—a result that was validated experimentally.
  • This work and the resulting computational platform can serve as a foundation for the development and broad application of electrical stimulation therapies for nerve regeneration.
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  • It is the first time to detect hepatic steatosis in a clinical environment using an electromagnetic method that estimate the dispersive effective permittivity of each side of the torso.
  • The proposed method offers significant potential in hepatic steatosis detection in clinical environments due to its robustness despite different body structures and small errors in antenna positioning.
  • The medical application is hepatic steatosis detection using electromagnetic system.
  • Unlike, US and CT devices which cannot detect the mild hepatic steatosis stage with less than 33% diffused fat, the proposed method is able to detect mild steatotic livers with only 15% diffused fat.
  • The proposed electromagnetic method for hepatic steatosis detection can overcome the limitation of traditional imaging methods by being safe, portable, and low-cost.
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  • This work aims to treat Gastroparesis with an innovative batteryless, wireless gastric electrical stimulator that is sufficiently small to be implanted with an endoscope through mouth and esophagus in the stomach.
  • Feasibility has been demonstrated in an anatomical model with a wirelessly-powered miniature (19 mm × 15 mm) implant and a wearable transmitter for electrostimulation therapy onto mucosal tissues.
  • Energy harvesting performances were characterized and the implant functions were demonstrated.
  • Remote reconfigurability of the stimulator was demonstrated without a dedicated communication channel.
  • This work demonstrates the design and characterization of a miniature batteryless wireless implant, and enables a new treatment method for patients who suffer from stomach motility symptoms.
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  • The proposed small coil antenna for implantable medical devices (IMDs) uses magnetic materials to reduce the size and increase the bandwidth in order to achieve high data rate communication.
  • Through the measurements taken, the proposed antenna achieved a data rate of 20 Mbps within 90 mm antenna distance in a 2/3 muscle bioequivalent phantom.
  • IMDs for treatment, diagnosis, and monitoring within the human body.
  • The main contribution of this paper is the fabrication and measurement of a small coil transmitting antenna to be placed inside the human body and a receiving antenna to be placed on the abdomen of the human body.
  • Antenna miniaturization and a wider bandwidth is realized by loading with magnetic material, and a 40-60 MHz band communication is used to reduce signal attenuation.
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  • The physical temperature of individual human tissue layers can be modeled using a coherent electromagnetic model and Pennes’ bioheat equation, providing a foundation for a non-invasive core body temperature sensor.
  • By accounting for variation in thermal and electromagnetic properties of each tissue across the human population, by using wideband measurements, and by not relying on a secondary contact-based temperature measurement, this thermal-electromagnetic model provides a more accurate foundation than previous attempts at on-body microwave radiometry.
  • An accurate, non-invasive core temperature thermometer can improve perioperative patient monitoring and therefore outcomes and monitor athletes, first responders, and others for hyperthermia, among other applications.
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  • The quasi-static model based on the electromagnetic field is applied for investigating the channel characteristics of galvanic coupling IBC, which is a front-runner candidate of the healthcare body area network (BAN).
  • The galvanic coupling IBC channel can be modeled as a linear band-limited channel with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), and regarding the suitable modulations, 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) is power-efficient in high data rate transmission, while for medium and low data rate transmission, quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 16-frequency shift keying (16-FSK) are better.
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  • The proposed scheme, incorporating the DNN machine learning and CSI based inversion, remarkably enhanced the reconstruction accuracy for complex permittivity profile of highly heterogeneous and dispersive breast media.
  • The DNN based initial estimate offers accurate dielectric profile, compared with the original CSI, and the post CSI optimization guarantees the physically consistent profile.
  • Microwave based breast cancer diagnosis is the target medical application.
  • The critical issues of inverse scattering problem could be significantly alleviated by a DNN based initial estimate, where the physical relevance is guaranteed.
  • The possibility and applicability for DNN in the inverse scattering problem have been demonstrated even in highly heterogeneous and dispersive dielectric media.
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  • This work reviews the micro and nanoparticles based drug delivery systems using RF, magnetic field, ultrasound, light, electrical current and microwaves as their triggering mechanisms.
  • Electromagnetic radiation at microwave frequencies can act as a good external trigger for drug delivery using micro and nanoparticles.
  • The targeted applications include controlled drug release, targeted drug delivery, and the control and manipulation of lab-on-chip devices.
  • The review is important because it tries to combine different forms of research (ultrasound drug delivery, magnetic drug delivery, RF drug delivery, etc.) into one platform related to micro/nanoparticles while providing a solid foundation for further research in developing multi-disciplinary drug delivery systems.
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  • A high-sensitivity planar resonator is obtained based on zeroth-order resonance (ZOR) for microfluidic characterization.
  • An area with the electric field highly concentrating is generated on the top surface of the sensor with the series mode of ZOR.
  • The proposed structure is a competitive candidate for the applications including bio-sensing and portable biomedical device.
  • The proposed sensor is sensitivity-enhanced based on simple structure.
  • The water-ethanol binary mixture and sucrose solution are used to proof the concept and the prediction models are analyzed.
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  • Whilst the possible generation of thermal “hot spots” around implants in in MRI scans is a known phenomenon, few published works describe the extent of the problem, and the current safety measurement standards require measurements at just a few individual points around an implant.
  • We employ parametric modelling to map out expected thermal gradients around implants of various geometries, to enhance the understanding of the requirements on temperature sensor placement, necessary to achieve accurate implant heating measurements during safety evaluations; simulation data are validated against experimental measurements.
  • This study employs metrological techniques to quantify the requirement for accurate temperature sensor placement in implant heating measurements during MRI.
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  • A non-invasive, robust, compact, and cost-effective electronic sub-terahertz waveguide iris probe for detecting tumor margins intraoperatively during breast-conserving surgery has been demonstrated in the research.
  • Waveguide iris probe using sub-terahertz frequency bands enables detection of positive margins without the need to resect tissues using 100 μm lateral resolution and 1 mm sensing depth for fat surrounding healthy tissues, which has been demonstrated using breast tissue phantoms.
  • This work focuses on imaging of excised tumors in breast-conserving surgery using a non-invasive compact setup analyzing the margin of the breast tumor utilizing the difference in dielectric constant between the normal and malignant tissues.
  • The results reveal the effectiveness of sub-terahertz waves for tumor margin assessment applications, which require high resolution and tissue penetrating imaging techniques.
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  • This study investigates, for the first time, the impact of the ear and finger curvature on the electromagnetic power absorption and temperature elevation at 26 GHz and 60 GHz, frequencies upcoming for 5G and next generations of mobile networks.
  • We demonstrate that the exposure levels induced in curved tissue-equivalent models with radii a representing typical curvature of ears (1 mm ≤ a ≤ 5 mm) and fingers (5 mm ≤ a ≤ 10 mm) may significantly differ from the ones in planar models: for a = 1 mm at 26 GHz the variations of the peak absorbed power density (APDmax) can reach −38.2 % for TE and 72.3% for TM polarization, while at 60 GHz, the maximal increase is 15 % for TM polarization and the maximal decrease is −18.7% for TE polarization.
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  • Advanced measurement systems and techniques are utilized to detect extremely weak EM radiation from bacterial biofilms. •Bacterial cells radiate EM waves in certain frequency bands; such radiation may play a role in intra- and inter-cell communication.
  • Understanding the communication mechanisms among cells in biofilms is critical for effective biofilm control and management, and can lead to advances in disease treatments.
  • This is the first time that EM radiation from Staphylococcus aureus biofilms has been detected in the GHz frequency range. The insight could lead to breakthroughs in demystifying how cells communicate as well as advancement of important technologies in biology and communication systems.
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  • Using an FMCW 77-GHz radar with MIMO configuration, Automatic Heartbeat Template (HBT) Extraction to reduce Random Body Swaying Motion and Respiratory Harmonics in remote vital sign monitoring.
  • Proposed Automatic HBT Extraction with MIMO configuration is able to reduce body swaying motion/respiratory harmonics and improve accuracy of HR estimation.
  • Proposed method can be used in public places to address the needs for health monitoring system.
  • In the presence of passive body swaying motion, proposed method helps to reduce their interferences, respiratory harmonics and improve the heart rate (HR) estimation’s accuracy.
  • The proposed method improves the accuracy rate of HR estimation in the presence of random body swaying motion compared to previously proposed methods.
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  • This work proposes the multi-band wireless power transfer (WPT) system based on the concept of parity-time (PT)-symmetry and presents in vitro experiments for bioimplant applications.
  • The PT-symmetric WPT system can achieve the dual-band, tri-band and wideband operations with high transmission efficiency in the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands.
  • The proposed multi-band PT-symmetric WPT systems may not only reduce the risk of infection, but, more importantly, address the high power and high data rate requirements for wireless biomedical implants.
  • The low-cost, compact and lightweight PT-symmetric WPT system may open a new pathway for bioimplants and biomedical devices.

Take-Home Messages

  • Compared to other sensing technologies, the employment of electromagnetic waves allows to fulfill the desired goals with higher accuracy, less privacy concerns, smaller size as the operating frequency increases, robustness against different ambient light and weather conditions.
  • A travel aid for visually impaired and blind people with human recognition and multiple moving target detection capabilities has been designed, simulated and tested.
  • The main medical application is to provide an advanced and complete travel aid for visually impaired and blind people to detect the possible obstacles within the scenario and distinguish human from non-human targets
  • This work provides the most complete electromagnetic travel aid for visually impaired and blind people, by exploiting an ad-hoc range alignment procedure suitable for short-range portable radars.

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  • Graphical formulation of microwave imaging is proposed as opposed to vanilla feed-forward models.
  • Graphs naturally incorporates the topology of the imaging setup which is otherwise uneasy to bake into model architecture.
  • The encoding of such prior information serves as restriction on search space which in turn reduces data requirements.
  • As symmetry of the setup is made used of, the modular design enjoys fixed size irrespective of number of sensors.
  • The minimalist size of the model despite voluminous data size prevents overfitting and processes the data in efficient manner by taking into consideration the mutual information between individual signals.

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  • We exploit the potentiality of a circular array of interrogating antennas to establish a robust RFID-based transcutaneous link with multiple Implantable Medical Devices with no battery onboard and also accounting for the safety constraints.
  • The minimum SAR-compliant power required to energize up to eight IMDs hosting the state-of-the-art sensor-oriented ICs is less than 23 dBm.
  • The capability to monitor multiple IMDs over a large region of the human body is useful in some biomedical applications.
  • The radiative near-field circular array permits establishment of a robust transcutaneous telemetry with multiple IMDs.
  • The transcutaneous telemetry of a multi-antenna array with multiple implanted sensors was studied, considering a circularly body region, but the findings of this work go far beyond this example of application with innovative and promising advancements in the whole realm of Implantable Medical Devices.

Take-Home Messages

  • Thermal radiation emitted by internal body tissues can be received by a sensitive radiometer and processed to determine the physical temperature of a sub-surface tissue layer.
  • Initial results in a water phantom are very encouraging, within 1°C of directly measured temperature, and paths for improvements are clear and feasible.
  • Internal body temperature is a key metric for both diagnostics and treatments, with applications spanning beyond the medical field as well.
  • This work indicates it is possible to determine internal body temperature with a low-power, non-invasive, passive approach that replaces existing methods that are invasive, expensive, or bulky.
  • 0.25 °C temperature error is demonstrated with a single calibration over a one-hour long measurement.

Take-Home Messages

  • The metamaterial (MTM) leaky wave antenna (LWA) based on super-regenerative oscillator (SRO) architecture can be used to detect multi-target vital sign information and motion, without complex systems or contacting targets.
  • Vital sign information for multi-site targets can be detected accurately at a farther distance, compared with radar sensors based on self-injection-locked (SIL) architecture.
  • The targeted biological application is vital sign or motion detection for multiple targets at different locations.
  • The proposed SRO-integrated MTM LWA can achieve higher sensitivity, lower power consumption, as well as great null point and steady cluster immunity with reduced system complexity for multi-target vital sign detection.
  • The proposed SRO-integrated MTM LWA can also be used in a portable device for different application scenarios, such as life searching under earthquake ruins, due to its low power consumption.

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  • This work describes the design and the realization of a wearable sensor working at 5.8 GHz exploiting the self-injection locking radar technique for human breath detection.
  • The sensor allows detecting inhalations and exhalations of monitored subjects living their normal life. The device is of reduced dimensions, fully wearable, and is located at a certain distance from the user’s body at the chest position.
  • The sensor architecture is conceived in such a way that it does not need a dedicated receiving station to be placed in the surrounding environment (such as a spectrum analyzer).
  • As a distinctive peculiarity with respect to the already existing solutions, the demodulator can further be exploited as an RF-to-DC rectifier for energy harvesting purposes.

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  • The sensing volume of an open-ended coaxial probe is defined as a hemiellipsoid using commonly defined sensing depth and sensing radius values for accurate measurement of heterogeneous tissues.
  • The hemiellipsoidal sensing volume is more accurate than the common cylindrical sensing volume based on field distribution.
  • This definition helps with measurement of dielectric properties of heterogenous tissues. The histological analysis using proposed sensing volume results in a more accurate association of the measured dielectric properties to the tissue content.
  • This definition presents a practical and straightforward method of approximating the sensing volume of the coaxial probes for heterogeneous tissues.
  • The sensing volume of a coaxial probe is investigated in the presence of finite heterogeneities with comparable dimensions to the probe’s sensing volume.

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  • Microwave breast screening systems using narrowband can facilitate low-cost, wearable devices for early detection and this study explores the variability of experimental carbon-rubber phantom data over distinct measurement dates.
  • The adapted narrowband system with 16 antennas can detect significant distinction between all-fat and tumor for certain signals.
  • The device and techniques presented in this work target the early detection of breast cancer with the final goal of an accessible, wearable device for frequent scans, providing a complementary, safe and non-invasive technique for improving survival rates in a broader population.
  • This work is the first to directly explore the repeatability of measurements using a prototype microwave breast screening device with breast-tissue phantoms.

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  • Live Jurkat human lymphocytes cells are characterized by impedance spectrum from 9 kHz to 9 GHz and analyzed by a double-shell model.
  • The double-shell model is based on four resistances RCM, (1 − r)RCP, RNM, and rRNP, and four capacitances CCM, CCP/(1 − r), CNM, and CNP/r, where r is the nucleus/cell radius ratio and subscripts CM, CP, NM, and NP refer to cell membrane, cytoplasm, nuclear membrane, and nucleoplasm, respectively.
  • The model assumes the nuclear effect is linear without assumptions of the size and shape of cytoplasm and nucleoplasm or the thickness of cell and nuclear membranes.
  • The extracted cell parameters are in agreement with that extracted on mammalian cells whether by impedance spectroscopy, dielectric spectroscopy, or dielectrophoresis.

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  • We present a solution to improve electromagnetic transmission for a body power system at millimeter-wave frequencies through the use of wearable dielectric scatterers.
  • We demonstrate that a set of dielectric cylinders worn on a textile fabric can focus and intensify the electromagnetic field in the underlying region, finding an interesting application for charging implantable or wearable devices.
  • Our study is of interest in applications involving wireless power transfer for biomedical applications, e.g. remote health monitoring via small implantable or wearable devices.
  • We present the analytical solution of the scattering of a plane wave from dielectric cylinders placed above a multilayer medium consisting of cotton, skin, fat and muscle, showing how it is possible to obtain an intensification of the electric field in the underlying layers in the case of TM-polarization of the incident wave.

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  • The innovative features of utilizing electromagnetic for biomedical applications in this manuscript consists of using microwaves along with a proper processing algorithm in order to sense, with high precision and accuracy, the blood glucose concentration through the resonance frequency shift of biomedical microwave resonant sensor.
  • By means of the algorithm proposed in this manuscript, the resolution of the biomedical microwave resonant sensor can be significantly increased, thus strongly enhancing the accuracy in the reconstruction of blood glucose concentration from the sensor response.
  • The targeted medical application is the continuous monitoring of blood glucose levels.
  • The proposed methodology is also useful for remarkably enhancing the resolution of any microwave resonant sensor.

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  • This manuscript focuses on the non-invasive wireless micro-crack detection on implantable prostheses by meansof the synergy between Space-Filling Curves (SFC) and UHF RFID batteryless transponders.
  • Numerical analysis and experimental test shown that the augmented medical device could identify cracks on itssurface and send this information outside from the human body, e.g. exploiting the passing through an RFIDactive gate.
  • This paper investigates an alternative method for the early detection of failures on implanted metal prosthesesto improve the efficacy of health prevention and to avoid the onset of more severe complications.
  • The claim of the manuscript is to demonstrate that the SFC-based crack detector can be applied on metal objects,such as implantable prostheses, with negligible effects on the mechanical robustness of the medical device.

Take-Home Messages

  • A new approach to obtain broadband permittivity differences between culture medium and yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cultures guided by broadband radio frequency (RF) measurements.
  • Machine learning algorithms can be applied to recorded S-parameters in order to classify the stage of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.
  • RF fields can enhance or reduce yeast cell growth, nonthermally, depending on the RF frequency.
  • The hypothesis that dielectrophoretic forces and fluidic diode rectification effects may play important roles in RF-cell non-thermal interactions should be further investigated.

Take-Home Messages

  • Characterization of breast tissue phantom models in the higher millimeter frequency range, i.e., D band (110-170 GHz), provides possible biomedical applications of D band-based imaging setups for non-invasive breast tumor margin assessment during lumpectomy procedures.
  • The dielectric properties of breast tissue phantoms have been explored in the D band using the waveguide probe calibration-based method, followed by an analysis of the electromagnetic properties of fat, fibrous, and tumor mimicking models through the study of transmission and reflection properties.
  • We find applications in imaging of excised tumors during breast conserving surgery through study of transmission and/or reflection properties using a non-invasive compact setup and utility in breast tumor margin analysis utilizing the dielectric contrast between normal and malignant tissues.

Take-Home Messages

  • We propose a methodology for the design of patch antennas to perform electromagnetic hyperthermia and enhance the effectiveness of radio or chemotherapy.
  • The design of antenna for hyperthermia should be carried out considering function and application-oriented goals, while taking into account the influence of anthropomorphic variability of patient parameters and refining the description of tumor blood perfusion when the treatment effectiveness is evaluated in silico.
  • This work addresses the problem of developing a minimal model for the numerical design of robust, effective and low-cost hyperthermia devices.
  • The case of abdominal rhabdomyosarcoma is analyzed using a re-designed compact patch antenna, with improved bandwidth and hyperthermic potential.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work presents tissue-mimicking mixtures to mimic the dielectric properties of skin, muscle, cortical bone, and trabecular bone.
  • Anatomically realistic phantoms must be considered as preclinical testing of the microwave imaging system.
  • The tissue-mimicking mixtures and the 3D-printed structures presented in this work can be used as a valuable test platform for a microwave imaging system for bone health monitoring.
  • The recipe of tissue-mimicking mixtures for cortical bone and trabecular bone is presented separately.
  • This study has proposed separate tissue-mimicking mixtures for cortical bone and trabecular bone.

Take-Home Messages

  • This paper reviews the main clinical applications of hyperthermia treatment planning for radiofrequency and microwave hyperthermia as a cancer treatment, and discusses ongoing developments.
  • Hyperthermia treatment planning is very useful to ensure and improve hyperthermia treatment quality.
  • Main clinical applications for superficial and deep-seated tumour locations are applicator selection, heating ability analysis and on-line treatment guidance.
  • Ongoing developments will improve the reliability of hyperthermia treatment planning, thereby further increasing the number of applications and the clinical impact.

Take-Home Messages

  • We propose a fundamentally new approach to design medical devices, in particular to support the selection of the matching medium properties and the working frequency in EM-based medical devices.
  • The optimal working conditions in deep pelvic tumors treated with adjuvant hyperthermia suggests a frequency within [130-500] MHz and a matching material with relative permittivity  < 20.
  • The targeted biological and/or medical applications are any EM-based medical devices, i.e., for diagnostics, therapy and/or treatment monitoring.
  • The optimal working condition of an EM-based medical device (the working frequency and the matching fluid) is selected to optimize 1) the transmission of EM waves, 2) the penetration depth and 3) the spatial resolution and 4) other specifications (for instance, practical implementation).
  • The approach can take into account patient body shape and properties variability.

Take-Home Messages

  • We provide guidelines for the design of an experimental microwave imaging system to realtime monitoring thermal ablation treatments of liver tumors.
  • The power transmission to the human liver can be maximized by selecting the appropriate working frequency and matching medium properties.
  • The target medical application of this work is thermal ablation of liver tumors and its monitoring using microwave imaging; The methodology is applicable for the monitoring of thermal treatment in different regions of the body.
  • The selected matching medium not only maximizes the power transmission to the human liver but efficiently reduces the antenna overall dimension at the chosen working frequencies. An appropriate antenna was designed to operate in the identified conditions.
  • The study on different antenna substrates and the feeding by the SMA connector shows that the antenna with RT/duroid 6010LM substrate is the best choice for the proposed microwave imaging system.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work deals with the use of microwave imaging (MWI) for brain stroke monitoring and presents a validation of an MWI prototype by means of a high-fidelity numerical model.
  • The numerical analysis reported in the paper shows that the considered MWI system is capable of performing the monitoring of hemorrhages and clots.
  • The paper deals with continuous monitoring of brain stroke, which is still an unmet clinical need which cannot be performed with currently adopted imaging modalities like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized x-ray tomography (CT).
  • The main claim of the work is to show how the adoption of a high-fidelity device-specific numerical model is important to perform in silico experiments of complex scenarios needed to address subsequent experimental activities.

Take-Home Messages

  • In this manuscript, the possibility of making early breast cancer detection by using millimeter-wave frequencies and tomographic approaches is deeply investigated by means of simulated and experimental tests on phantoms.
  • This manuscript demonstrates the capability of the tomographic approaches, in particular the Linear Sampling Method and the Born Approximation, to correctly identify the target in both simulations and experimental scenarios.
  • The approach proposed in this manuscript could be used for early breast cancer detection.
  • In this work, for the first time, tomographic approaches for millimeter-wave breast imaging are used, demonstrating the possibility of achieving reliable images of the target with good resolutions, also when the available amount of data is limited.

Take-Home Messages

  • Ovine dielectric data are collected, distinguishing between the two functional tissues composing the adrenal gland (cortex and medulla): a sizable difference between the dielectric properties of the two tissues is observed.
  • Optimized Cole-Cole model of the ovine dielectric properties are presented to allow integration of the data into numerical electromagnetic models.
  • Human data are collected considering both healthy and diseased adrenal tissues. Dielectric properties of ex vivo human adrenal glands are measured, presented and compared with data of ex vivo animal models.
  • The ovine adrenal gland is a feasible model for the optimization of electromagnetic based devices tackling Primary Aldosteronism, e.g., microwave thermal ablation devices.
  • The ovine model electromagnetically resembles the composition of the human adrenal gland. The ovine model may be adopted in pre-clinical studies to test the safety and performances of MWA.

Take-Home Messages

  • This study provides a detailed quantitative analysis of the electromagnetic power absorption and temperature elevation in presence of a textile at 26 GHz and 60 GHz, frequencies upcoming for 5G and next generations of wireless communications systems.
  • We demonstrate that a textile in contact or in proximity of skin impacts the power deposition and the consequent temperature elevation; in particular, cotton and wool in contact with skin increase the absorbed power density up to 41.5% at 26 GHz and 34.4% at 60 GHz.
  • The interest of this study is to evaluate the exposure in the upcoming 5G bands in the scenarii involving interaction of electromagnetic fields in presence of a textile layer (usage of a tablet lying on the user’s legs or of radiating devices during wintertime when wearing hats or gloves).
  • We analysed and quantified the power absorption and temperature elevation at 26 and 60 GHz in presence of some of the most common clothing textiles (i.e. cotton and wool).

Take-Home Messages

  • Two different indoor UPA antennas at 3.7 and at 14 GHz are modelled to simulate the presence of a 5G AP in a room. Two different human models and different configuration scenarios are considered, where the UPA antenna gain is maximized to obtain the RF-EMF exposure assessment. The highest SAR10g levels were obtained in the head area for all the exposure scenarios and the highest SAR10g peak values were measured when the UPA was placed laterally to the human model.
  • We highlight the reciprocal position between the antenna and the model head and the frequency range and the distance are factors that could greatly influence the levels of exposure. The targeted biological applications are the calculated SAR10g distributions in some specific tissues of the two human models, due to the exposure to 5G AP.
  • We have expanded the knowledge on the RF-EMF exposure assessment on a single user, considering novelties introduced by the incoming 5G networks in indoor scenarios.

Take-Home Messages

  • The possibility of performing noninvasive diagnosis of cervical diseases by using microwave imaging systems is explored in this paper.
  • A feasibility analysis has been conducted by considering both numerical and simplified experimental phantoms, showing good capabilities in reconstructing 2D images of the neck.
  • The envisioned technique could be useful for monitoring different diseases affecting the neck (e.g., cervical myelopathy) in a safe and less expensive way, thus allowing a frequent use.
  • The obtained results, although still preliminary, show that it is in principle possible to identify the cervical spinal canal inside neck models, opening new grounds for the application of microwave imaging to biomedical diagnostics.
  • An initial imaging prototype has been presented, comprising a set of transmitting/receiving antennas held in contact with neck by means of a 3D printed collar as well as an efficient inverse scattering technique based on a nonlinear Newton-type algorithm for reconstructing neck images. Moreover, a 3D-printed liquid-filled simplified phantom of the neck has been created to aid the preliminary assessment of the proposed technique.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work introduces a pre-correction strategy to increase control over the critical issue of temperature distribution in microwave hyperthermia treatment planning, when the optimization of the antenna feedings is performed on the basis of the specific absorption rate (SAR).
  • The pre-correction compensates the effect of the thermal boundary conditions arising from the skin cooling system (water bolus) and physiology (e.g., the air flow in respiratory tracts), so that the SAR-based optimization of the antenna feedings attains a better temperature focusing.
  • The medical application concerns patient-specific treatment planning in microwave hyperthermia using phased array applicators.
  • The proposed strategy allows to use existing knowledge, software and equipment with a significantly better temperature focusing performance and a consequent overall enhancement of the treatment quality.
  • The work analyses the discrepancy between SAR and temperature profiles due to the external conditions, derives a simplified model of the phenomenon, and uses extensive simulation of this simplified model to compensate the discrepancy, properly guiding the optimization of the electromagnetic power deposition (SAR).

Take-Home Messages

  • This article provides an optimized algorithm for fast and accurate imaging, which is of great significance for building a real-time clinical medical system
  • A multiple back-projection with impact factor algorithm based on circular scanning is proposed to suppress artifacts and remove noise effectively
  • Microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography is a promising efficient non-ionizing method for breast cancer diagnosis
  • Optimize the back projection algorithm to suppress artifacts and remove noises effectively.
  • The MBP-IF method not only calculates the initial acoustic pressure of the thermoacoustic (TA) signal for each pixel, but also calculates the acoustic pressure distribution at different time points of TA wave propagation.

Take-Home Messages

  • A new noninvasive temperature measurement method based on microwave-induced compressive thermoacoustic tomography (MICTAT) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated.
  • A 2-D temperature map of biological samples can be estimated based on MICTAT
  • This technique can be applied in microwave hyperthermia and other biomedical applications where noninvasive temperature measurement is desired.
  • This work establishes the detailed rationale of the 2-D MICTAT based temperature measurement technique and the applied compressive TAT approach can render the method cost effective for potential real-time applications.
  • This method can not only see the shape of the sample but also review the temperature distribution in the sample.

Take-Home Messages

  • A new approach to obtain broadband permittivity differences between culture medium and yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cultures guided by broadband radio frequency (RF) measurements
  • RF fields can enhance or reduce yeast cell growth, nonthermally, depending on the RF frequency.
  • The hypothesis that dielectrophoretic forces and fluidic diode rectification effects may play important roles in RF-cell non-thermal interactions should be further investigated.

Take-Home Messages

  • Rapid measurement of signals transmitted through breast tissue provides consistent estimates of average permittivity in a group of volunteers over the timeframe of breast cancer treatment.
  • Consistency of signals, images, and permittivity estimates are observed over time for volunteers and differences are attributed to repositioning between scans.
  • Similarity between scans of right and left breast for volunteers suggests potential for identifying changes in breast tissue, for instance during cancer treatment monitoring.
  • Frequent scans of a group of volunteers have not been previously reported, so this work gives insight into the differences due to system performance, repositioning, and normal tissue fluctuations.

Take-Home Messages

  • This paper presents a new microwave imaging prototype which can be used as a complementary screening modality to aid breast cancer staging through the detection of axillary lymph nodes, addressing the main challenges of imaging an irregular body region with microwave technologies.
  • The study confirms the potential of microwave imaging for the detection of axillary lymph nodes, showing imaging results with Signal-to-Clutter higher than 2.8 dB and a Location Error lower than 15 mm.
  • The prototype and the methodology presented in this work is tailored for the axillary region application and can be a starting point for other irregular body regions microwave imaging applications.
  • The present work is a significant contribution to the development of a microwave imaging system suited to image the axillary region, fr

Take-Home Messages

  • Based on the dielectric properties of biological tissues, EIM applies known weak AC signals of different frequencies to obtain impedance information (including |Z| and θ) of muscles, which was used to evaluate muscle fatigue induced by NMES in this manuscript.
  • Compared with NMES intensity (amplitude and pulse width), muscle fatigue was mostly influenced by frequency, with low frequency exerting a better effect. And with the muscle fatigue induced by NMES, |Z| and θ both showed a decreasing trend during NMES.
  • The target of this work was to optimize the NMES method and provides a new method for NMES muscle fatigue monitoring, so that NMES can be better applied to improve the function of muscle tissue or reshape nerve channels.
  • The trend of |Z| and θ were similar to the mean power frequency (MPF) of the surface electromyography (sEMG), which proves the rationality of EIM in fatigue evaluation.
  • At 20 kHz, |Z| and θ decrease greatly, and it is the measurement frequency with obvious change of EIM parameters.

Take-Home Messages

  • Antennas acting as sensors were used to capture reflection coefficient data for increasing levels of brain tissues affected with Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the microwave region, which were then used in several machine learning algorithms to train a system that could automatically predict and classify the stage of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.
  • Machine learning algorithms can be applied to recorded S-parameters in order to classify the stage of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.
  • The research presented in this work targets research in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease detection and machine learning for medical diagnostics.
  • The significance of this work highlights that noninvasive signals obtained from antennas, acting as sensors, can be utilized in machine learning algorithms to accurately determine the progression and stage of Alzheimer’s disease.
  • Amongst the tested machine learning algorithms, logistic regression and linear discriminant analysis were found to be the most accurate and efficient in predicting the stage of Alzheimer’s disease based on the recorded S-parameters.

Take-Home Messages

  • We propose a quantitative analysis method for measuring biological solutions including glucose in multicomponent aqueous solutions.
  • Analysis results show quantification of the target molecule in complex biological samples.
  • Many research papers involving noninvasive glucose sensors have reported measurement results under a single-component system in which only the glucose concentration changes. We propose a method for measuring multiple components for which the protein concentration and sample temperature change.
  • Since the concentration of each sample used in the experiments has a physiological range, the proposed method is well suited for application to noninvasive and nondestructive biological measurement.

Take-Home Messages

  • A new microwave-induced thermoacoustic imaging (MITAI) modality using scanning orthogonal polarization excitation is proposed to improve the imaging quality for small animals.
  • Complete features of a mouse and a frog sample can be reliably reconstructed by the proposed method, which is superior to the circularly-polarized-antenna based MITAI approach in terms of several factors.
  • This technique can be applied in biomedical imaging of small animals and large biological samples based on MITAI
  • This technique presents a practical and easy-to-implement method to homogenize microwave power distribution in complicated biological samples for MITAI applications.
  • This works also presents the first animal imaging results of compressive sensing based MITAI.

Take-Home Messages

  • The paper discusses the competencies and capabilities of near-field communication for medical implantable systems.
  • For simultaneous wireless power and data transfer, three major approaches of resonant inductive coupling, ultrasonic coupling, and capacitive coupling, which operate based on the magnetic field, sound waves, and electric field, respectively; are discussed, and developed systems are reviewed.
  • The novel concept of Neural Dust referring to mm-sized medical implants, which are operating on the nervous system and brain, is discussed.
  • The challenges of the design of implantable systems for the gastrointestinal tract are discussed.
  • The proposed solutions and techniques to ensure the continuity of the wireless link are discussed, and the implemented closed-loop systems are reviewed.

Take-Home Messages

  • Using an FMCW 77-GHz radar with MIMO configuration and Channel Combining Technique such as Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) would improve heart signal quality and its estimation accuracy.
  • Adapted wavelet are designed and used with Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) to reduce respiratory harmonics interferences.
  • With MIMO-MRC, signal-to-noise ratio are enhanced by up to 6 dB compared with Channel Average Methods.
  • Proposed algorithms chain can be used in public places to address the needs for health monitoring system.
  • The use of MIMO with channel combining technique MRC in conjunction with the well-known method arctangent demodulation (AD) and Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) with Adapted-wavelet to achieve accurate HR detection.
  • Similar and portable hardware can be deployed to realistic scenarios for vital sign monitoring applications.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work shows investigations of the skin phantoms commonly used in the microwave breast imaging research and reports their measured dielectric properties in a consistent manner for meaningful comparison.
  • The characterization results indicate that all phantoms under investigation compare well with the reported measurements on the ex-vivo human skin, making each an acceptable choice in breast phantoms.
  • These findings are vital for microwave breast tumor detection application, as they imply the recommended choice among the skin phantoms, depending on the prioritized criteria – ease of fabrication, long-term stability and complexity.
  • The significance of this work is that the microwave-range skin-mimicking phantoms so far reported had different chemical composition but were also characterized with varying instrumentation, rendering their comparison challenging.
  • Here, each of the skin-mimicking phantoms is characterized on its own and when superimposed on a fat-mimicking tissue layer, a representation closer to the realistic anatomical layout.

Take-Home Messages

  • Harmonic Motion Microwave Doppler Imaging (HMMDI), employing simultaneous excitation of the tissue with focused ultrasound and microwaves, was recently proposed by our group as an alternative hybrid imaging method for breast cancer detection
  • Utilizing the fast simulation method developed in this study, we extensively analyzed the received HMMDI signal for low to medium dielectric contrast (1:1.17, 1:2.6, 1:3.75) and elastic contrast (1:1.5, 1:2.5, 1:5) levels, which may be challenging for conventional microwave imaging methods.
  • HMMDI method was shown to discriminate a small tumor inclusion inside fibro-glandular breast tissue availing of the difference between their elastic properties despite their similar dielectric constants.
  • The results of this study provide useful information for the development of the HMMDI method as a tool for breast cancer detection in dense tissues.
  • Our analysis showed that the received signal level from a stiff inclusion has three main regimes as a function of vibration frequency, providing useful information on the elasticity contrast and size of the inclusion.

Take-Home Messages

  • A new approach for electrical lumped element representation of biological cells is introduced.
  • The presented lumped element model provides an overview of the general electrical behavior of a cell as electrical current distribution within different cell layers.
  • The proposed method can be used in studies where electromagnetic treatment of cells with focus on electric fields is the case (e.g. Tumor Treating Fields).
  • A huge advantage of the presented model is that it can be easily adapted to different cell types and cell dimensions and thus is multiply deployable.
  • Simple formulas are deduced which allow a sufficient approximation of the lumped element parameters in a frequency range up to several hundreds of megahertz.

Take-Home Messages

 

Take-Home Messages

  • This paper addresses the effects of frequency variation on the magnetic and induced electric fields in deep brain stimulation scenario where a modified magnetic resonance coupling coil (MMRC) is utilized to stimulate a realistic human head model at frequencies from 1 to 30 kHz, while different tissues are defined according to their frequency-dispersive dielectric properties, to ensure accurate results at different frequencies.
  • It is observed that to choose the optimum frequency range for the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) system, several factors, including safety limits, stimulation threshold, desired magnetic flux density, and targeted depth, should be considered.
  • Understanding the effects of frequency variation on the induced electric field and the implication on the overall brain stimulation and patient safety is essential to properly design a coil and stimulator for deep TMS system.
  • The numerical case study demonstrates that fields focality, depth of stimulation, and even power consumption are found to be profoundly affected by frequency change at frequencies below 12 kHz, while these attributes are almost saturated above this frequency band.
  • The conclusions drawn from this numerical case study regarding the frequency selection to stimulate the targeted depth without exceeding the safety limits, while using minimum possible power, can be adopted as a systematic approach for analysing and determining the efficacy and safety of new deep TMS systems.

Take-Home Messages

  • A microwave heat applicator is proposed to enhance the efficiency of DNA delivery into a subcutaneous tumor.
  • The proposed end-fire dielectric rod antenna provides efficient and localized microwave heat generation at the subsurface tumor location in a short period of time with low RF power consumption to enhance DNA delivery into a tumor
  • This work aims to develop a hand-held device that could elevate the temperature of a subsurface tumor by 5-7 °C.
  • The proposed applicator is able to concentrate subsurface heating on the treatment area and achieve the desired elevated temperature in a reasonably short time period provides a practical path to a clinically-viable method for improving the effectiveness of electroporation-assisted DNA delivery.

Take-Home Messages

  • Ovine dielectric data are collected, distinguishing between the two functional tissues composing the adrenal gland (cortex and medulla): a sizable difference between the dielectric properties of the two tissues is observed.
  • Optimized Cole-Cole model of the ovine dielectric properties are presented to allow integration of the data into numerical electromagnetic models.
  • Human data are collected considering both healthy and diseased adrenal tissues. For the first time, dielectric properties of ex vivo human adrenal glands are measured, presented and compared with data of ex vivo animal models.
  • The ovine adrenal gland is a feasible model for the optimization of electromagnetic based devices tackling Primary Aldosteronism, such as microwave thermal ablation devices. The ovine model electromagnetically resembles the composition of the human adrenal gland. The ovine model can potentially be adopted in preclinical studies to test the safety and performances of MWA.

Take-Home Messages

  • In this manuscript, the possibility of making early breast cancer detection by using millimeter-wave frequencies and tomographic approaches is deeply investigated by means of simulated and experimental tests on phantoms.
  • This manuscript demonstrates the capability of the tomographic approaches, in particular the Linear Sampling Method and the Born Approximation, to correctly identify the target in both simulations and experimental scenarios
  • The approach proposed in this manuscript could be used for early breast cancer detection.
  • In this work, for the first time, tomographic approaches for millimeter-wave breast imaging are used, demonstrating the possibility of achieving reliable images of the target with good resolutions, also when the available amount of data is limited.

Take-Home Messages

  • Composite materials can be used to develop life-long phantoms with stable dielectric properties.
  • Realistic and stable phantoms are necessary for initial validation of electromagnetic medical imaging systems.
  • This work presents a more realistic tissue distribution head phantom with improved dielectric properties of tissues-mimicking material compared to previous works.
  • This manuscript addresses the necessity of stable and lifelong realistic phantoms to test electromagnetic medical imaging systems.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work deals with the use of microwave imaging (MWI) for brain stroke monitoring and presents a validation of an MWI prototype by means of a high-fidelity numerical model.
  • The numerical analysis reported in the paper shows that the considered MWI system is capable of performing the monitoring of hemorrhages and clots.
  • The paper deals with continuous monitoring of brain stroke, which is still an unmet clinical need which cannot be performed with currently adopted imaging modalities like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized x-ray tomography (CT).
  • The main claim of the work is to show how the adoption of a high-fidelity device-specific numerical model is important to perform in silico experiments of complex scenarios needed to address subsequent experimental activities.

Take-Home Messages

  • The work proposes a fundamentally new approach able to design medical devices, in particular to support the selection of the matching medium properties and the working frequency in EM-based medical device.
  • The optimal working conditions in deep pelvic tumors treated with adjuvant hyperthermia suggests a frequency within [130-500] MHz and a matching material with relative permittivity <20.
  • The targeted biological and/or medical applications are any EM-based medical devices, i.e., for diagnostics, therapy and/or treatment monitoring.
  • The optimal working condition of an EM-based medical device (that are the working frequency and the matching fluid) is selected such to optimize 1) the transmission of EM waves, 2) the penetration depth and 3) the spatial resolution and 4) other specifications (for instance, practical implementation). The approach can take into account patient body shape and properties variability.
  • The validity of the proposed approach in its general-purpose mathematical formulation paves the way for its wide application.

Take-Home Messages

  • The work proposes a fundamentally new approach able to design medical devices, in particular to support the selection of the matching medium properties and the working frequency in EM-based medical device.
  • The optimal working conditions in deep pelvic tumors treated with adjuvant hyperthermia suggests a frequency within [130-500] MHz and a matching material with relative permittivity <20.
  • The targeted biological and/or medical applications are any EM-based medical devices, i.e., for diagnostics, therapy and/or treatment monitoring.
  • The optimal working condition of an EM-based medical device (that are the working frequency and the matching fluid) is selected such to optimize 1) the transmission of EM waves, 2) the penetration depth and 3) the spatial resolution and 4) other specifications (for instance, practical implementation). The approach can take into account patient body shape and properties variability.
  • The validity of the proposed approach in its general-purpose mathematical formulation paves the way for its wide application.

Take-Home Messages

  • Two different indoor uniform planar array (UPA) antennas at 3.7 GHz and at 14 GHz were modelled to simulate the presence of a 5G Access Point (AP) in a room. Two different human models and some different configuration scenarios were considered, where the UPA antennas gain was maximized to obtain the RF-EMF exposure assessment
  • The highest SAR10g levels were obtained in the head area for all the exposure scenarios and the highest SAR10g peak values were measured when the UPA was placed laterally to the human model.
  • The work highlighted that the reciprocal position between the antenna and the model head, but also the frequency range and the distance, are factors that could greatly influence the levels of exposure.
  • The targeted biological applications are the calculated SAR10g distributions in some specific tissues of the two human models, due to the exposure to a 5G Access Point (AP)
  • The study permitted to expand the knowledge about the RF-EMF exposure assessment on a single user,
    considering the novelties introduced by the incoming 5G networks in indoor scenarios.

Take-Home Messages

  • The possibility of performing noninvasive diagnosis of cervical diseases by using microwave imaging systems is explored in this paper.
  • A feasibility analysis has been conducted by considering both numerical and simplified experimental phantoms, showing good capabilities in reconstructing 2D images of the neck
  • The envisioned technique could be useful for monitoring different diseases affecting the neck (e.g., cervical myelopathy) in a safe and less expensive way, thus allowing a frequent use.
  • The obtained results, although still preliminary, show that it is in principle possible to identify the cervical spinal canal inside neck models, opening new grounds for the application of microwave imaging to biomedical diagnostics.
  • An initial imaging prototype has been presented, comprising a set of transmitting/receiving antennas held in
    contact with neck by means of a 3D printed collar as well as an efficient inverse scattering technique based on a nonlinear Newton-type algorithm for reconstructing neck images. Moreover, a 3D-printed liquid-filled simplified phantom of the neck has been created to aid the preliminary assessment of the proposed technique.

Take-Home Messages

  • The proposed method considerably enhances the noise-robust feature using a simple post-processing algorithm for the multi-frequency data integration, considering the frequency dependent dielectric property.
  • The multi-frequency CSI scheme has remarkably upgraded the noise-robust feature of CSI, compared with single frequency CSI scheme. Since the proposed scheme is based on a simple post-processing, it is easily applicable to various frequency dependent models, by implementing the assumed model.
  • TWe targeted microwave breast cancer detection, where the dielectric property between normal and malignant tissues should be quantitatively recognized.
  • Noise-robustness is greatly enhanced by multi-frequency integration, which enables us to make more reliable detection for breast cancer tissue in realistic scenarios.
  • Accuracy-enhanced quantitative breast imaging of complex permittivity would be expected to upgrade the recognition rate of medical diagnosis.

Take-Home Messages

  • This study provides, for the first time, a detailed quantitative analysis of the electromagnetic power absorption and temperature elevation in presence of a textile at 26 GHz and 60 GHz, frequencies upcoming for 5th generation (5G) and next generations of wireless communications systems.
  • We demonstrate that a textile in contact or in proximity of skin impacts the power deposition and the consequent temperature elevation; in particular, cotton and wool in contact with skin increase the absorbed power density up to 41.5% at 26 GHz and 34.4% at 60 GHz.
  • The interest of this study is to evaluate the exposure in the upcoming 5G bands in the scenarii involving interaction of electromagnetic fields in presence of a textile layer (e.g. usage of a tablet lying on the user’s legs or of radiating devices during wintertime, when wearing hats or gloves).
  • We analysed and quantified, for the first time, the power absorption and temperature elevation at 26 GHz and 60 GHz in presence of some of the most common textiles used for clothes (i.e. cotton and wool).
  • We demonstrate that with the textile in direct contact with skin the temperature rise increases compared to the bare skin by up to 52% at 26 GHz and 46% at 60 GHz and that, with an air gap and for typical textile thicknesses, the variation ranges from −3.5% to 20.6% and from −11.1% to 20.9% at 26 GHz and 60 GHz, respectively.

Take-Home Messages

  • This paper reviews the main clinical applications of hyperthermia treatment planning for radiofrequency and microwave hyperthermia as a cancer treatment, and discusses ongoing developments.
  • Hyperthermia treatment planning is very useful to ensure and improve hyperthermia treatment quality.
  • Main clinical applications for superficial and deep-seated tumour locations are applicator selection, heating ability analysis and on-line treatment guidance.
  • Ongoing developments will improve the reliability of hyperthermia treatment planning, thereby further increasing the number of applications and the clinical impact.

Take-Home Messages

  • A new approach for breath-rate monitoring based on electrical impedance measurements performed with electrodes placed on the patient’s head is presented in this paper.
  • The developed technique has been found to effectively estimate the breath rate by exploiting the variations induced in the measured electric impedance due to the physiological changes in the pharynx produced by respiration.
  • The envisioned system can be used to continuously monitor the breath rate and to eventually warn patients and clinicians of critical conditions.
  • The present work and the obtained results can be useful for developing low-cost and non-invasive wearable devices for continuous breath-rate monitoring, as well as for other biomedical applications.
  • A robust and accurate ad-hoc signal processing algorithm has been developed for extracting and tracking over time the frequency associated to respiration from electrical impedance measurements.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work presents tissue-mimicking mixtures to mimic the dielectric properties of skin, muscle, cortical bone,
    and trabecular bone
  • Anatomically realistic phantoms must be considered as preclinical testing of the microwave imaging system.
  • The tissue-mimicking mixtures and the 3D-printed structures presented in this work can be used as a valuable
    test platform for a microwave imaging system for bone health monitoring.
  • The recipe of tissue-mimicking mixtures for cortical bone and trabecular bone is presented separately.
  • This study has proposed separate tissue-mimicking mixtures for cortical bone and trabecular bone.

Take-Home Messages

  • The reported advancement is motivated by the objective to design an integrated wearable system for breast health monitoring.
  • We show that the IC pulse radio can replace the off-shelf components without compromising the breast tumor detection capabilities of the clinical prototype.
  • The objective application of the system is to design an integrated wearable prototype for breast health monitoring.
  • We have successfully integrated the IC pulse radio into the microwave radar system; the results with phantom measurements indicate that this would be a viable alternative to bulky and expensive off-the-shelf components, bringing us a step closer to the envisioned compact, low-cost wearable device for radar-based microwave breast screening.

Take-Home Messages

  • A stepped-frequency continuous-wave (SFCW) radar system with adequate pulse repetition frequency (PRF) is used to provide a 2-D data matrix from moving subjects for human gait analysis purposes using a developed state-space method- (SSM-) based signal processing technique, i.e., 1-D block processing technique with 2-D data set.
  • 1-D block processing technique with 2-D data input can track each body component accurately and can capture the dynamics and nonlinearity of the weak scatterers due to the high smoothness of the enhanced Hankel matrix formed from 2-D data matrix. The target application of our device is to monitor breast health over time with a low-cost wearable microwave radar device.
  • The targeted biological and medical applications of this work are diagnosis of health issues and abnormalities, elderly care and health monitoring, and treatment of joint problems.
  • The breakthrough of this work is developing a reliable gait analysis technique that can track different limb joints of human subjects accurately using a convenient non-contact method.
  • The SFCW radar system with enough PRF and 1-D block processing that is applied to the 2-D data collected by this radar system provides a suitable non-contact method for multi-subject human gait analysis even in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments.

Take-Home Messages

  • This is, to our knowledge, the first systematic controlled experimental study investigating the interaction of a microwave-based breast cancer screening system with a titanium clip, a marker embedded in the breast tissue after the post-biopsy procedure.
  • We demonstrate that the post-biopsy marker does not affect image quality or tumor detection capability of the microwave radar breast health monitoring device.
  • The target application of our device is to monitor breast health over time with a low-cost wearable microwave radar device.
  • The results of this work are vital for allowing us to include the post-biopsy patients in clinical trials and ultimately allow the post-biopsy patients to benefit from the microwave radar system for tracking the tumor during the treatment phase.
  • The results of our work show that the system response caused by a tumor presence in the phantom is significantly higher than the system response to a post-biopsy clip, making the tumor detectable even if the marker is present in the phantom.

Take-Home Messages

  • An anatomically realistic knee phantom with accurate dielectric permittivity and conductivity for each tissue has been introduced to achieve accurate internal and external knee structure.
  • Characterization and modeling for ligament tissue in addition to the fabrication of knee tissues have been introduced.
  • The developed phantom will open the door for developing and testing electromagnetic imaging (EMI) systems for onsite detection of knee injuries.
  • The used materials include graphite, aluminum powder, and epoxy provide long life, low cost, and stable properties.

Take-Home Messages

  • The proposed novel, flexible, miniaturized, highly sensitive and broadband reject filter is implemented as a wearable, non-invasive, highly accurate and continuous blood glucose monitoring RF based sensor.
  • The proposed RF-based sensor can display with accuracy a high correlation between its scattering parameters and the variation in glucose levels over multiple frequencies as validated by in-vitro, ex-vivo and human trials’ experiments.
  • This study targets non-invasive and continuous monitoring of glucose levels in a human blood stream for the management of diabetes.
  • This work presents the first completely non-invasive glucose-monitoring sensor that exhibits highly accurate results over a wide frequency range when tested in serum, animal models and human trials.
  • The sensor can be easily adapted to the different patients due to its inherently wide range of operational frequencies, which renders its data analysis rich in features.

Take-Home Messages

  • In this work we propose a methodology for the design of patch antennas to perform electromagnetic hyperthermia and enhance the effectiveness of radio- or chemotherapy.
  • The design of antenna for hyperthermia should be carried out considering function and application-oriented goals, while taking into account the influence of anthropomorphic variability of patient parameters and refining the description of tumor blood perfusion when the treatment effectiveness is evaluated in silico.
  • This work addresses the problem of developing a minimal model for the numerical design of robust, effective and low-cost hyperthermia devices. The case of abdominal rhabdomyosarcoma is analyzed using a re-designed compact patch antenna, with improved bandwidth and hyperthermic potential.
  • The 3D perfusion of tumors is described avoiding discrete-vascular model, thus favoring the functional design of hyperthermic devices, such as antennas for radiative local hyperthermia.
  • The translation of hyperthermia devices into clinical practice could be enhanced by the more accurate, robust and application-oriented design of such hyperthermic technologies.

Take-Home Messages

  • This manuscript introduces a new applicator design that has the ability to heat multiple brain tumors simultaneously based on adaptive beamforming technique. To achieve this goal, the phase and amplitude of each antenna element is optimized using the modified version of GSA-PSO algorithm.
  • The results show the opportunity of high degree focusing hyperthermia treatment on multiple tumors seated at different locations within the brain while inhibiting any hot spots in healthy tissue.
  • The proposed technique can be applied effectively to other tumors located into different organs such as breast tumors.
  • In this work, it is the first time to use the adaptive beamforming technique for heating multi-tumors simultaneously using a 3-D realistic environment of the brain model and irregularly shaped tumors.

Take-Home Messages

  • Wideband dielectrophoresis flow cytometry performs cell-by-cell analysis and can measure the dielectric spectra of cells covering the entire 300 kHz – 400 MHz range.
  • Quantitative measurement of full beta-dispersion dielectric spectra enables fitting to a two-shell dielectric model that includes cell membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus dielectric properties as well as their sizes.
  • The dielectric spectra and models of different cell phenotype or state, such as those for viable and non-viable CHO cells presented in this work, can be used to interpret bulk-media biosensor and dielectric probe measurements.
  • Measurement of wideband dielectric spectra and use of multi-shell dielectric models provide a method of linking dielectric spectroscopy measurements to cell morphology and physiology, offering a rapid label-free analysis tool for biological studies.

Take-Home Messages

  • The innovative feature of the proposed device is combining microwave energy and RF current into one device which can realize cleaner blood vessel sealing.
  • The proposed device capable of vessel sealing without producing smoke while can cut coagulated area without the need of a blade installed.
  • The proposed device is targeted for a surgical operation which target blood vessel.
  • By combining the usage of microwave energy and RF current into one device, a cleaner vessel sealing can be realized while also reducing the mechanical part of the device.
  • Using porcine blood vessel, we tested withstand pressure of the sealed area and it can provide enough vascular sealing capability in a case where the sealed tissue is the human blood vessel.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work presents a light, batteryless, and wireless strategy to continuously monitor a biofuel cell implanted in a laboratory rodent using a Frequency Identification (RFID) link.
  • The proposed telemetry system successfully monitored a glucose/O2 biofuel cell continuously in vitro and in vivo over a 24-hour cycle (one day and night).
  • The targeted biological application is the study of an implanted glucose/O2 biofuel cell in a real-case scenario involving a living laboratory rodent.
  • The main breakthrough of this work is that the passive and lightweight wearable telemetry system allows the monitoring of the biofuel cell while keeping the animal free to move inside its cage, allowing long term measurement.
  • A very good agreement between the in vitro and in vivo measurements was observed, evidencing the resilience of our system to the animal typical behavior.

Take-Home Messages

  • Numerical dosimetry was useful to estimate the distribution of EMF in a realistic vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication scenario that includes realistic (for size, dimension, shape and materials) and accurate models of the car, the communicating antennas (four) and a human phantom.
  • Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) induced in the worst-case scenario was below the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) and IEEE 2019 limits for the general public in the 100 kHz-6 GHz band and was equal to 0.008 W/kg for the whole-body and 1.58 W/kg for local exposure (in the head); in
    all tested scenarios, the peak of SAR was located in the skin.
  • The biological target is the evaluation of SAR in a car passenger (adult driver) due to exposure to 5.9 GHz fields used in V2V communication.
  • This work is the first study of RF exposure assessment in the novel scenario of V2V communication and contributes to new and realistic knowledge to assess possible health effects, for the design of policies for public health management.

Take-Home Messages

  • Next generation implantable medical devices (IMDs) are likely to be much smaller than today’s, making telemetry more difficult. A focusing lens may be used to guide power to the IMD.
  • Current research in polymer engineering is moving towards materials that can be injected as fluids that turn into soft, conductive solids when heated; this paper anticipates using these materials for in vivo 3D printing.
  • A sleeved-slot coaxial applicator with a pointed, extended, hollow inner conductor can provide both heating and injection of the biopolymer.
  • Using this applicator, with 1W of power at 2450 MHz, a 400 mm3 area can be heated from body temperature to 40°C in 10s.

Take-Home Messages

  • A miniaturized ultra-wideband implantable antenna for cardiac pacemakers is designed to realize wireless charging and can be further applied to medical body area network communications.
  • The simulation results of the designed ultra-wideband implantable antenna are in good agreement with the measured results, which have proved that the antenna can be used for wireless charging of medical devices.
  • The targeted biological and medical applications are power supply and body area network communication of implanted devices.
  • Ultra-wideband and dual-band operations are realized, which can transmit power and body area network communicate simultaneously.
  • A wireless charging system operating at 430MHz loaded with a metasurface is designed, and the metasurface is employed to increase the transmission efficiency of the WPT system.

Take-Home Messages

  • We design a novel low-power wireless RF sensor which could perform long-term continuous vital-sign monitoring for chelonians.
  • We report the shell temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and activity level during the entire brumation cycle, and establish the important trend and correlation among the key parameters.
  • Our sensor can be applied to clinical and behavioral studies that require minimally invasive and unbiased long-term vital-sign monitoring for conscious people and animals.
  • Our proposed system is the first to report the correlation among the shell temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and activity level of an entire one-week brumation cycle for a conscious tortoise.
  • The all-in-one wearable sensor can be applied to many animals with various surface coverings to record continuous vital signs over a long term not only for behavior and ecological studies but also for comparative biology.

Take-Home Messages

  • This work presents a light, batteryless, and wireless strategy to continuously monitor a biofuel cell implanted in a laboratory rodent using a Frequency Identification (RFID) link.
  • The proposed telemetry system successfully monitored a glucose/O2 biofuel cell continuously in vitro and in vivo over a 24-hour cycle (one day and night).
  • The targeted biological application is the study of an implanted glucose/O2 biofuel cell in a real-case scenario involving a living laboratory rodent.
  • The main breakthrough of this work is that the passive and lightweight wearable telemetry system allows the monitoring of the biofuel cell while keeping the animal free to move inside its cage, allowing long term measurement.
  • A very good agreement between the in vitro and in vivo measurements was observed, evidencing the resilience of our system to the animal typical behavior.

Take-Home Messages

  • To assess future trends in noninvasive neuromodulation, we report the design and demonstration of a multifunction, multi-coil dense array system that validates reconfigurable and variable depth of penetration, with the potential capability for excitation patterns over multiple sites (simultaneously or sequenced), reduced extraneous excitation, and adjustable pulse widths (power efficient waveforms).
  • Measurements confirm that the depth of penetration of the magnetic field can be reconfigured (previously only simulated in the literature ([25]-[27]) by varying the current magnitude and phase of the smaller diameter coils in the array to achieve the same decay profile performance of a larger diameter coil.
  • A scalable testbed has been established as a flexible tool to examine future applications of neuromodulation techniques using multichannel dense coil arrays.
  • Hexagonal coils shapes, best employed in high packing density, head-worn, multi-coil arrays, show improved depth of penetration measurements over circular coil arrays (first reported measurements in the literature).
  • Multichannel multi-coil arrays show promise in achieving many of these parameters in one multifunctional
    array as opposed to the single-function commercial coils (circular, figure-8 or H coil) being used today.

Take-Home Messages

  • It is the first time to classify stroke types using complex network methods (graphs).
  • The proposed efficient graph degree mutual information method offers significant potential for analysing and classifying stroke types based on electromagnetic signals.
  • The medical application is stroke classification using electromagnetic imaging technology.
  • The proposed method enables fast classification of strokes, with the results indicating that haemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke can be distinguished with an accuracy of 94%, in less than one minute on a PC.
  • The proposed graph methods can accurately classify stroke types without computationally expensive brain reconstruction algorithms such as tomography.

Take-Home Messages

  • The self-injection-locked (SIL) radar sensor system can be used in healthcare, such as for noncontact vital sign and motion detection, without the need for a complex system.
  • SIL radar sensor systems have greater sensitivity, better signal-to-noise ratio, and greater clutter immunity than conventional continuous-wave (CW) radars.
  • The targeted biological applications herein are the detection and localization of vital signs in human and animals.
  • The proposed SIL radar sensor system can be used to provide vital sign and range information simultaneously, with low system complexity, high sensitivity, and great clutter immunity.
  • The SIL radar sensor system can also be used in a wearable device for monitoring vital signs, such as heart rate variability; its architecture and signal processing method are provided.

Take-Home Messages

  • An innovative 2-dimensional stochastic approach based on the combination of principal component analysis and Kriging method was proposed and applied to evaluate how the spatial distribution of RF-EMF emitted by a WiFi source in a realistic residential environment was influenced by the uncertainty of the exposure scenario.
  • In three different usage scenarios of the WiFi source, i.e. surfing to a new web site, using a Skype video call and watching a You Tube video at 1080p, electric field strength in the apartment was found to have median values in the range 2.2 – 96.1 mV/m and 90th percentiles in the range 4.9-209.3 mV/m.
  • The targeted biological application are the RF-EMF exposure levels in a residential environment when a WiFi source is placed in unknown positions.
  • This study gave important information for future deployments of RF sources in residential indoor environments, thus contributing to generate the whole picture of human RF exposure needed for a safe use of the forthcoming of 5G technologies.
  • The proposed method, used for the first time in the RF-EMF framework, confirmed its suitability as a feasible approach to develop stochastic models when complex EMF exposure scenarios are taken into account.

Take-Home Messages

  • A new electric impedance tomography system based on an ad-hoc low-cost and portable hardware setup combined with an efficient Lebesgue-space inversion procedure has been developed for brain stroke imaging.
  • The developed prototype has been validated both with numerical simulations involving a realistic model and with preliminary experimental data obtained with a phantom mimicking the shape and dielectric properties of the head, showing good detection capabilities.
  • EIT imaging systems have good potentialities for the detection and monitoring of brain strokes, both in the most critical early hours and during the subsequent treatment phases.
  • The present work and the obtained results can be useful for the development of electrical impedance tomography systems and techniques for brain stroke monitoring and diagnosis, as well as for other applications in biomedical imaging.
  • A Lebesgue-space inversion procedure, previously applied in microwave imaging applications, has been adapted for electrical impedance imaging, showing good regularization capabilities and improved accuracy with respect to other standard Hilbert-space approaches.

Take-Home Messages

  • Electromagnetic (EM) field distributions in high-resolution human body models were compared for generic and vendor-specific whole-body birdcage coil models using different levels of permissible variations of the coil electrical components.
  • Evaluation of EM exposure based on either a generic model or an ideal coil circuit-level optimization of a realistic model to a given load indicates an unknown, non-negligible uncertainty in the prediction of the electric field generated inside a patient during a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination.
  • The targeted medical application is an evaluation of the EM field generated in the human body during MRI.
  • Simplified modeling of EM exposure can lead to unknown and non-negligible uncertainty in the radio-frequency (RF) safety assessment of an implant or a sensor electrode that is in contact with the human skin.
  • Profiles of the RF transmit magnetic field (𝐵1+) alone are insufficient for a robust validation of an MRI coil model if the human EM exposure is to be evaluated.