Broadband Tissue Mimicking Phantoms and a Patch Resonator for Evaluating Noninvasive Monitoring of Blood Glucose Levels

What is it about?

This paper describes new recipes for making "phantoms": materials that replicate the electromagnetic properties of human bodies over a broad range of frequencies. Such materials are important to develop wearable or implantable wireless devices, typically for health care, and increasingly for the "quantified self" and "wellness" movements. Phantoms are also necessary for designing mobile phones and related devices, like Bluetooth headsets. With the modern trend towards having multiple radios at different frequencies within the same device, making one phantom for all radios would simplify testing and reduce costs. To demonstrate the application of the phantoms, they were used in an investigation into detection of changes in blood glucose levels using purely radio signals (no blood samples).

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Why is it important?

The phantoms described show improved performance over a broad band of frequencies and are extremely useful in designing and testing devices using multiple frequency bands. The possibility of monitoring blood glucose non-invasively continues to attract a great deal of research effort, with obvious applications for diabetes monitoring, but also for wider health and fitness monitoring as well.

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