There is a keen interest in the exploration of new generation emitters and detectors due to advancements in innovation of new materials and device processing technologies which have opened up new frontiers in the Terahertz (THz) spectrum. Therefore, it is necessary to review the developments in THz technology for healthcare applications, their impact, implications and prospects for ongoing research and development. This paper provides a broad overview of the current status and prospects of application of THz imaging and sensing for the healthcare domain. We present current knowledge, identify existing challenges for wide scale clinical adoption of THz systems and prospective opinions to facilitate research and development towards optimized and miniaturized THz systems and biosensors that provide real operational convenience through emerging trends. Firstly, we provide an overview of the THz imaging and sensing techniques that exploit properties of THz generation and detection with emphasis on terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) and THz Metamaterials. The mechanisms of tissue image contrast and the application of THz imaging and sensing for biomedical applications in particular, the cancer detection application is reported. Secondly, an outlook toward the advancements in THz technology in the interface of healthcare 4.0 and its enabling technologies is explored for next generation smart and connected healthcare systems. Third, we identify the merits and existing challenges in THz cancer imaging and sensing and suggest prospective opinions to pave way to ongoing and future research. Further, we discuss the recent advances in THz imaging development and the contribution of near-field techniques based on plasmonic, and resonance based metasurfaces, waveguides etc. for breaking the diffraction limit towards development of THz systems that are convenient for point of care. We bring researchers a roadmap for future research scope.

Terahertz Imaging and Sensing for Healthcare: Current Status and Future Perspectives

There is a keen interest in the exploration of new generation emitters and detectors due to advancements in innovation of new materials and device processing technologies which have opened up new frontiers in the Terahertz (THz) spectrum. Therefore, it is necessary to review the developments in THz technology for healthcare applications, their impact, implications and prospects for ongoing research and development. This paper provides a broad overview of the current status and prospects of application of THz imaging and sensing for the healthcare domain. We present current knowledge, identify existing challenges for wide scale clinical adoption of THz systems and prospective opinions to facilitate research and development towards optimized and miniaturized THz systems and biosensors that provide real operational convenience through emerging trends. Firstly, we provide an overview of the THz imaging and sensing techniques that exploit properties of THz generation and detection with emphasis on terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) and THz Metamaterials. The mechanisms of tissue image contrast and the application of THz imaging and sensing for biomedical applications in particular, the cancer detection application is reported. Secondly, an outlook toward the advancements in THz technology in the interface of healthcare 4.0 and its enabling technologies is explored for next generation smart and connected healthcare systems. Third, we identify the merits and existing challenges in THz cancer imaging and sensing and suggest prospective opinions to pave way to ongoing and future research. Further, we discuss the recent advances in THz imaging development and the contribution of near-field techniques based on plasmonic, and resonance based metasurfaces, waveguides etc. for breaking the diffraction limit towards development of THz systems that are convenient for point of care. We bring researchers a roadmap for future research scope. 

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Monitoring urine ketones can be useful for diagnosing diabetes In this paper we present a method to detect diabetic ketoacidosis in synthetic urine samples by sniffing dimethyl ketone traces A portable E-nose was developed using five metal oxide (MOX) gas sensors configured and controlled by eight bits microcontroller The analog signals from gas sensors are converted to digital by the ten bits analog to digital converter (ADC) housing the microcontroller The experiments were done on synthetic-urine dimethyl ketone dissolution with concentrations between 1 to 100 mg/dL The results show that we can determine dimethyl concentration with a great accuracy, over 85% which demonstrate the great possibility of use this method in detection of ketoacidosis in real urine samples

Monitoring Diabetic Ketoacidosis by Urine Ketones Tracing Using an E-Nose

Acetone discriminator and concentration estimator for diabetes monitoring in human breath

The present study investigates the use of terahertz radiations for non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. In this proposal, we have designed and tested a new cost-efficient device consisting of a THz source and detector that will serve as the first step to develop a noninvasive glucometer. Experimental test measurements have been reported.

Design of a cost-efficient terahertz system for biomedical applications

We set up in this work the evidence that an electronic nose system can be used for the noninvasive monitoring of human blood glucose since there is a direct correlation between acetone levels in exhaled breath and the blood glucose concentration. We designed and tested two types of gas sensors, and we present their features in order to develop an e-nose sensitive to the very low acetone concentration, and capable of discriminating the various interferences that may be present in human breath, and which may affect the measurements. In this study SnO2 and WO3 were used as gas sensing materials with a layer thickness of 50nm each, these layers have been deposited on silicon substrates containing platinum contact electrodes. Experimental test measurements and relevant data analyses have been conducted.

Can WO 3 and SnO 2 be used as acetone gas sensors in exhaled human breath for noninvasive blood glucose monitoring

Breast cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in women worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to propose an automatic diagnosis of breast cell histopathology (BCH) images to help pathologist in breast cancer detection and diagnosis. In this paper, a hybrid approach for an automatic detection of BCH images is proposed. In preprocessing step, color normalization and histogram stretching are used for image enhancement quality. Local adaptive thresholding, K-means, morphological operations and watershed method using fast radial symmetry transform (FRST) are combined to improve segmentation performance. For the classification, 13 morphological features, 9 intensity features and 25 texture features are extracted and relevant features are selected based on ReliefF algorithm. Finally, the tumor classification is performed using support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Our method was tested on 58 BCH images and we achieve a segmentation and a classification accuracies of 86.77% and 86.20% respectively. These results show that the proposed method gives better diagnosis performance compared to other methods.

Sara Boumali

Papers

Design of a cost-efficient terahertz system for biomedical applications

Can WO 3 and SnO 2 be used as acetone gas sensors in exhaled human breath for noninvasive blood glucose monitoring

Acetone discriminator and concentration estimator for diabetes monitoring in human breath

A Hybrid Approach for Automatic Breast Cancer Detection