An insight into bone dielectric properties variation: a foundation for electromagnetic medical devices

Abstract

Dielectric properties of bones have recently got significant attention to monitor bone quality. This paper reports in-vitro dielectric properties of human trabecular bone samples obtained from osteoporotic and osteoarthritic patients. The measurements were performed by using open-ended coaxial probe technique. The study further focuses on intra-femoral head variation of dielectric properties within two patients, and inter-disease comparison of bone dielectric properties between osteoporotic and osteoarthritic patients. The results suggest that dielectric properties significantly vary between different parts of femoral head within each patient and mean relative permittivity of osteoarthritic patient is higher in magnitude when compared to osteoporotic patient. The difference is observed more in relative permittivity profiles of each patient’s bone samples than conductivity profiles.