Dielectric and Double Debye Parameters of Artificial Normal Skin and Melanoma

Abstract

The aim of this study is to characterise the artificial normal skin and melanoma by testing samples with different fibroblast and metastatic melanoma cell densities using terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) attenuated total reflection (ATR) technique. Results show that melanoma samples have higher refractive index and absorption coefficient than artificial normal skin with the same fibroblast density in the frequency range between 0.4 and 1.6 THz, and this contrast increases with frequency. It is primarily because that the melanoma samples have higher water content than artificial normal skin, and the main reason to melanoma containing more water is that tumour cells degrade the contraction of the collagen lattice. In addition, complex refractive index and permittivity of the melanoma samples have larger variations than that of normal skin samples. For example, the refractive index of artificial normal skin at 0.5 THz increases 4.3% while that of melanoma samples increases 8.7% when the cell density rises from 0.1 to 1 M/ml. It indicates that cellular response of fibroblast and melanoma cells to THz radiation is significantly different. Furthermore, the extracted double Debye (DD) model parameters demonstrate that the static permittivity at low frequency and slow relaxation time can be reliable classifiers to differentiate melanoma from healthy skin regardless of the cell density. This study helps understand the complex response of skin tissues to THz radiation and the origin of the contrast between normal skin and cancerous tissues.