Terahertz Experimental Measurements of Human Breast Tissue

In this paper, the pulsed terahertz (THz) system is proposed for characterizing electrical properties of freshly excised human breast tumors. Single point THz transmission spectroscopy is used to collect data to calculate the refractive index and absorption coefficient of different tissue types across the frequency range from 0.1-3.5 THz. Additionally, a THz reflection imaging method is used to collect data to extract the refractive index and absorption coefficient at each pixel on the tissue. THz images are then constructed based on the extracted coefficients that show good differentiation between different tissue types. The overall goal of this work is to establish THz characterization methodology to be used intraoperatively for the margin assessment of excised breast tumors.