Empirical comparison between effective medium theory models for the dielectric response of biological tissue at terahertz frequencies

Abstract

We study the use of three effective medium theory models, namely, Maxwell-Garnett, Bruggeman and Landau-Lifshitz-Looyenga, for the dielectric response of biological tissue in the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum. In order to accomplish our objectives, we performed measurements on water-dehydrated basil binary mixtures encompassing the entire concentration range and we further analyze the dielectric function with the models. Our results indicate that the Landau-Lifshitz-Looyenga and Bruggeman models provide marginally better fit to the experimentally measured dielectric function in the THz-band. We further discuss the biological relevance of the models in the context of our experimental data based on their fundamental assumptions.