Development of a near-field teraHertz microscope for breast cancer diagnostics
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Date
2015
Authors
Trimboli, Maxine Grace
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
Due to the sensitivity of teraHertz radiation to differentiating cancerous and healthy tissue, a teraHertz imaging microscope was developed for cancer diagnostics. The subject of this thesis is the design, assembly and verification of such a system. An optical knife-edge test was developed for beam profile determination at both optical and teraHertz frequencies. While waiting for the plasmonic lens to be fabricated an optical analogue imaging system was developed to evaluate the microscope design and software development. The design of the optical and teraHertz imaging systems included a two-axis translation stage with PSO option for sample translation and data collection during stage motion. Through analysis of THz images, verification of sub-wavelength resolution and sensitivity for differentiation of tissue types was determined. Imaging of cancerous samples was not possible at this time, the data presented are samples of rat brain tissue used to verify the system’s capability for margin determination.
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Keywords
physics , imaging , cancer , breast , diagnostics , near-field , plasmonics , medical