In vivo THz imaging of human skin: Accounting for occlusion effects

摘要

In this paper we show how the act of measuring skin in vivo using a standard terahertz reflection imaging system affects the terahertz response. We found that even 5 seconds occlusion by the imaging window caused subtle changes in the THz response. As the occlusion time increases, the skin's surface water content increases which causes the refractive index of the skin to increase. This in turn leads to a decay of the amplitude of the reflected THz signal. In this work, we examine and propose a model in time domain for the occlusion with the view to compensating for this unwanted effect.