Response of blood urea using RF scalar network analyzer

Abstract

Urea content in the human blood is an important parameter to monitor the healthy state of a human being. Normally a patient is sent to pathological laboratories for blood extraction to quantify the actual urea percentage. Although this method is accurate, it requires a lot of time and reagents. It also involves the fear of infection during the extraction of blood. The method described in this manuscript gives a simple technique based on RF response of urea in the human tissue. In this paper, laboratory samples of various urea percentages were prepared and their responses were measured using a RF dielectric loss cell. The setup consists of a signal generator and a spectrum analyzer connected in scalar network mode to measure the RF response from 10MHz to 500MHz. The results show that there is a linear relation between the dielectric loss and the percentage of urea in the sample.