A preliminary study on monitoring the progression of osteoporosis using UWB radar technique in distal femur model

Abstract

In this Letter, the preliminary study on the progression of osteoporosis using ultra wide band radar technique suggesting two different cases, (1) For various bone thickness and (2) For different effective permittivity is presented. To monitor the progression of osteoporosis, resistively loaded dipole antenna was designed and used as a sensor. For use in targets representing intermediate stages of progression, methanol, ethanol, water, and wood were used for emulating effective dielectric constant of bone in real situation. Measurement results show consistent decrease in the enveloped difference voltage in the two cases which correlate to the loss of bone mineral density. In the future, these results will be useful for people with osteoporosis to predict fractures in advance.