Prof. Charles V. Sammut, Dr Lourdes Farrugia and Mr Julian Bonello, from the Electromagnetics Research Group at the Department of Physics, participated at the 12th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2018) in London, UK between 8 and 14 April.
During the conference, Dr Lourdes Farrugia co-chaired a session convened jointly with Dr Emily Porter from the National University of Ireland, Galway. This convened session consisted of ten papers focusing on new research on the interaction of animal and human tissues with electromagnetic fields (dielectric properties), and the importance of accurate knowledge of these in the design and optimisation of novel electromagnetic medical devices for diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Some interesting presentations on how to address inconsistencies and the large variability in the reported dielectric data for key tissues such as breast were delivered.
It was noted that in order to provide a solid foundation for medical technologies, the dielectric spectroscopy community must address issues such as the development of novel measurement techniques, clinical-based measurement errors, expansion of the dielectric property database and development of a standardised protocol for conducting repeatable measurements of dielectric properties of heterogeneous tissues.
In another session, Dr Farrugia presented a paper outlining the true dielectric contrast of healthy and malignant breast tissue based on historic and more recent studies, showing the large variability in the published data, the lack of recorded meta-data for most studies and also the need for more studies which investigate variations within a patient. The presentation was very well received by the audience, especially by those working on breast microwave imaging. A number of very interesting and important insights resulted during discussions with other international experts in the field.