Identification of Early-Stage Cervical Cancer Tissue Using Metamaterial Terahertz Biosensor With Two Resonant Absorption Frequencies

Abstract

We propose a simple method for fast and label-free identification of early-stage cervical cancerous tissues using a metamaterial (MM) terahertz (THz) biosensor with two resonant absorption frequencies at 0.286 THz and 0.850 THz, respectively. Because the two resonant absorption frequencies are very sensitive to the ambient change of dielectric properties, the cervical cancerous tissues can be distinguished from the normal tissues by analyzing the resonant frequency shift. The calculated sensitivity of the low resonant frequency and that of the high resonant frequency are 29 and 74 GHz/RIU, respectively. In the experiment, the cervical cancerous tissue samples were taken from different patients, and the cancerous and normal parts were determined by hematoxylin-eosin (HE) stain. Compared with the traditional method of directly detecting cancer tissue without the sensor, this method has the advantages of being simple, label free and fast. In addition, compared with biosensors which have a single resonant absorption frequency, the biosensors with double resonant absorption frequencies have higher accuracy. This method potentially can be applied for the detection and diagnosis of many other cancer tissues.