Potential of urine dielectric properties in classification of stages of breast carcinomas

Abstract

Some evidences have been found that urine can be used as a biomarker for the detection of many types of diseases. The purpose of this study is to use permittivity of urine to assess whether different stages of breast cancer are significantly different. Changes in electrical resistance of urine samples to applied microwaves were measured over a frequency range between 10MHz to 20GHz. This is carried out by the measurement of samples' response to applied microwave energy using network vector analyzer. SPSS was used to find out the significant difference in urine permittivity values across different stages of breast cancer. The results show significant difference between stage 1 and stage 2 in all dielectric parameters of urine permittivity. Significant difference was also found between stage 2 and stage 3 in both dielectric constant and loss factor parameters while the significant difference between stage 1 and stage 3 only exists in loss factor parameter. The results suggest that it is possible to estimate the stage of breast cancer based on the dielectric properties of urine.