A10 - Postmortem quantification of brain edema by determination of electromagnetic tissue parameters
- Event
- 11. Dresdner Sensor-Symposium 2013
2013-12-09 - 2013-12-11
Dreikönigskirche - Haus der Kirche Dresden - Chapter
- 1. Biosensorik und Point of Care
- Author(s)
- T. Reinecke, V. V. Schulte, H. Spehlbrink, S. Zimmermann - Leibniz Universität Hannover/D, L. Hagemeier, M. Klintschar - Medizinische Hochschule Hannover/D
- Pages
- 169 - 173
- DOI
- 10.5162/11dss2013/A10
- ISBN
- 978-3-9813484-5-3
- Price
- free
Abstract
One important task during autopsy is the evaluation of edema, since the occurrence of edema, especially in the brain, is often directly linked to the cause of death. However, there is still no standardized procedure in forensic medicine to exactly quantify edema in parenchymatous organs. Thus the aim of our work is to explore the possibilities to determine the dielectric constant of brain tissue that correlates with the tissue’s humidity content. Based on these results, the development of a fast and accurate, but low-cost measurement system that fits into the procedure of an autopsy is aspired. Our first approach is based on a coaxial measurement of the complex permittivity in order to investigate the relation between permittivity and humidity content. The humidity content was measured with a thermo gravimetric reference system. We found a linear regression with an excellent correlation coefficient between the real part of the permittivity and the humidity content in the tissue. These results show that an objective quantification of edema via a measurement of the complex permittivity is possible with a high accuracy. The subsequent step is the usage of a so-called open-ended coaxial line for the determination of the tissue’s permittivity to avoid a sampling process und thus to speed up the measurement procedure. Here, we present first measurement results that are in good agreement with the results gained from the previous used coaxial measurement setup.