2018 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Human sweat duct as a helical antenna: experimental investigation
| Project/Area Number |
17K19075
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| Research Institution | Shizuoka University |
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Principal Investigator |
トリパティ サロジ 静岡大学, 工学部, 准教授 (20648729)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2017-06-30 – 2019-03-31
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| Keywords | terahertz / sweat duct / helical antenna |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Recently, it was reported that the human sweat ducts in skin act as a low-Q-factor helical antenna due to their helical structure and resonate in the terahertz frequency region, when the ducts are filled with sweat. In this study, we studied the morphological details of human sweat ducts using optical coherence tomography and we computed the frequency of resonance of sweat duct. In order to investigate the resonance, we developed the terahertz time domain spectrometer working in attenuated total reflection mode. We designed triangular Silicon prism, which was placed in the path of the THz wave in such a way that the THz wave undergoes total internal reflection at the boundary between the prism and air.
We recruited several human subjects and we measured the reflection of terahertz wave from the tip of the finger as the density of the sweat duct is high in this region. Since the sweat glands are typically activated by sympathetic nervous system, we measured the THz wave reflection from the finger when the subject is under stress. In order to evoke sweating due to the mental stress, the subject was asked a sets of math questions. During this process, we simultaneously measured the THz reflection from the finger and computed the attenuated total reflectance. We observed the reduction of reflection in the terahertz spectra at around 300 GHz, which we believe is due to the sweat duct resonance. However, the repeatability of the results needs to be investigated further in order to confirm the sweat duct resonance.
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Research Products
(8 results)
