Non-invasive imaging of biological microstructures by VHF waves

Abstract

The most of medical imaging methods involve ion izing waves and scanning of a wide human body area whether the area under investigation is large or not. In this paper, we propose a novel method to evaluate the shape of microstructures for application in the medical field, with a very low invasiveness for the patient. We focus our attention on the the tooth’s root canal shape estimation, which is a crucial step in the endodontic procedures. The proposed method makes use of a flexible thin wire antenna to be inserted into the tooth’s root canal and radiating non-ionizing Very High Frequency (VHF) waves. By measuring the spatial distribution of the magnetic field in the neighboring of the tooth, it is possible to reconstruct the tooth’s root canal shape by solving an inverse problem that involves the estimation of the shape of the antenna against the sensors panel. Simulation results show the validity and the robustness of the proposed approach