Microwave dielectric properties of osteosarcoma cell line (SAOS-2) suspensions

Abstract

Dielectric properties of biological tissues have been limited to some in vivo animal and mostly ex vivo animal and human tissue measurements. Recent studies showed that factors changing after the excision of tissue such as temperature, heterogeneity, hydration can significantly alter the dielectric properties. However, due to the challenging nature of performing dielectric properties on living tissues, the underlying factors of dielectric property discrepancy between diseased and healthy tissues remains an open question. As building blocks of tissues, cells can serve as an alternative sample to living tissue to explore the fundamental dielectric property discrepancy between normal and diseased tissues. With this motivation, we are reporting two different concentrations of Osteosarcoma Cell Line (SAOS-2) suspended in Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM) dielectric property measurements. Dielectric property measurements are performed with the open-ended coaxial probe technique between 500 MHz to 18 GHz. A very small decrease (0.5 units) is observed between the relative permittivity of pure DMEM and cell suspension. Similarly, the difference between dielectric properties of 12,500,000 SAOS-2 cell suspensions and 22,500,000 SAOS-2 cell suspensions is found to be small and inconsistent at frequencies between 500 MHz to 18 GHz.