Electromagnetic Characterization and Modelling of Artificial Tissues

During the course of our life, many of us will know someone affected by cancer. The prognosis of the disease depends greatly on the early detection of cancerous cells, and therefore on the understanding of the growth of cancer cells and their interactions with their biological environment. Many existing techniques can be used to detect cancer cells. However, most of them involve potentially harmful radiations, and/or lengthy measurement time and/or prohibitive costs. In this context, radiofrequency (RF) techniques offer non-ionizing, fast and low- cost alternatives to the state-of-the-art solutions. However, the electromagnetic response of biological materials is largely unexplored, especially in the terahertz domain. Moreover, the wave-matter interaction is complicated by the difficulty to isolate homogenous tissue samples during measurements. The growth of cells in small devices designed to emulate the complexity of life cycle, also known as cells or organs-on-a-chip, offers the possibility to study healthy and cancerous cells of a given type in a controlled, reproducible environment. The aim of this PhD is to characterize and model the RF response of such chips mimicking the mechanisms of cancer growth over a broad frequency range, from microwaves through the much less explored terahertz. (source: PhD proposal Ref. BAP-2021-173)