368 PIERS Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013

An Overview of Metamaterials in Biomedical Applications

S. Raghavan and V. Rajeshkumar
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli 620015, India
Abstract Communication technologies and biomedical sensors can provide services for the
patients vital signs to be monitored outside the clinical environment. The need for implantable
telecommunication devices for medical applications has been growing rapidly over the past ten
years. Microwave antennas and sensors are key components of telemetry systems related to medi-
cal applications. Metamaterials are articial materials which have the electromagnetic properties
that may not be found in nature. The unusual properties of a metamaterial have led to the
development of metamaterial antennas, sensors and metamaterial lenses for miniature wireless
systems which are more ecient than their conventional counterparts. Metamaterials exhibit
a very sensitive response to the strain, dielectric media, chemical and biological sensing appli-
cations. A wide area of biomedical applications using metamaterials has been discussed in this
review. The design concept of metamaterial antennas in ISM band is presented. Later, the funda-
mental theory and recent progress of metamaterial in sensors, lenses and absorbers are reviewed
for various healthcare applications towards its practical implementation.
1. INTRODUCTION
In Recent years, need for the deployment of wireless telemetry systems in medicine has signicantly
increased due to necessity for early diagnosis of diseases and continuous monitoring of physiological
parameters. Microwave antennas and sensors are key components of these telemetry systems since
they provide the communication between the patient and base station. Metamaterials can have
their electromagnetic properties altered to something beyond what can be found in nature. Hence
metamaterials have been attracted great interest among microwave engineers and physicists, due to
showing exotic electromagnetic properties at microwave frequencies. A split-ring resonator (SRR)
is one of the metamaterial particles that oer negative permeability [1], while complementary
split-ring resonator (CSRR), the duality of SRR, interacts with the electric eld and introduces
negative permittivity [1], which are most commonly used in biomedical sensors. It is well known
that SRRs are resonant structures, and consequently, it is possible to employ these resonances as
well as radiating modes. SRRs are very compact and it is easy to design them with dual band
characteristic. The review of metamaterials towards various healthcare applications is described in
the subsequent sections.
2. METAMATERIAL ANTENNAS FOR ISM BAND
The Industrial, Scientic and Medical (ISM) radio bands are portions of the radio spectrum re-
served internationally for the use of radio frequency (RF) energy for industrial, scientic and
medical purposes other than communications. By using metamaterial like EBG (Electromagnetic
Band Gap) structures in slotted microstrip antenna the increased eciency and better return loss
characteristics can be achieved [2]. A patch antenna with slotted ground plane has been developed
in which EBG structure is used as a metamaterial above the ground plane. The designed antenna
has suitable characteristics at two frequency bands (20672245 MHz) covering UMTS band and
(23902795 MHz) covering ISM band [2].
A wireless endoscope is a capsule-shaped system used for gastrointestinal monitoring and/or
treatment. A 2.4-GHz ISM-band folded patch antenna is designed, fabricated, and characterized
by Xiaoyu Cheng et al. for a wireless capsule endoscope application. A CSRR loaded patch has been
fabricated on a exible substrate and folded in a cylindrical shape, forming a self-packaged folded
patch antenna with a quasi-omnidirectional radiation pattern [3]. The designed CSRR loaded
patch, featuring compact size, EMI shielding and quasi-omnidirectional radiation pattern for a
wireless endoscope [3]. The CSRR contributes a 74% size reduction compared to its traditional
patch counterpart without CSRR loading [3]. The large enclosed space would be available for
placing digital controllers, EMI sensitive sensors, cameras, batteries, or drug delivery systems [3].
A high gain pencil beam array antenna for the applications within the 24 GHz ISM band has
been designed by A. Rennings et al. [4]. The high-gain pencil-beam array antenna based on com-
posite right/left-handed (CRLH) metamaterial transmission-lines, referred as CRLH meta-lines.
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013 369
A metamaterial-inspired handset antenna designed to reduce the specic absorption rate (SAR)
for mobile communication. The SAR reduction was achieved by miniaturizing the physical size of
the antenna for the resonance frequency of 2.4 GHz, by devising a metamaterial-inspired radiator
much smaller than the conventional planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) [5]. Further, the dual band
microstrip patch antenna has been designed for implantable medical devices, which covers the ISM
(2.42.48 GHz) band. The antenna has a multilayer conguration where the feeding line and the
radiating elements are located at dierent levels. The radiating elements of the antenna are a split
ring resonator (SRR) coupled to a spiral and both elements are short-circuited to the ground plane
to achieve size reduction [6].
3. METAMATERIALS IN CANCER DETECTION
Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body, called as malignant cells. By
developing microwave devices and combining it with structures inspired by metamaterials, it can
lead to a very cost-eective device that can localize with high precision an abnormality within
the human body. The basic principle behind the cancer detection is, a small change in the water
content of biological tissues produces changes in the permittivity () and conductivity () values
of the tissues [7]. The malignant cells have signicantly higher water content than normal tissues.
Hence the permittivity and the conductivity of the tumor are higher than those ones of a normal
tissue at microwave frequencies. The proposed biosensor consists of an array of complementary
metallic metamaterial resonators. The reason for choosing SRRs are their strong response to an
electromagnetic eld [7].
An electromagnetic source generates an electromagnetic wave impinging on the metamaterial
array and a detector is placed to reveal the signal after the array. The biosensor without any material
under test has a specic resonant frequency [7]. The variation of the permittivity caused by the
presence of the material under test, acts on the capacitance of the resonators, leading to a high-
sensitive variation of the sensor resonant frequency. Thus the shift in resonant frequency and the
shape of the response is extremely useful to detect the tumor. Further, the frequency multiplexed
two dimensional sensor array based on SRR for organic tissue analysis has been proposed by
Margarita Puente et al.. A frequency multiplexed 2-dimensional sensor array was developed using
microstrip-line excited SRRs which are designed to have dierent resonant frequencies is shown
in Fig. 1(a) [8]. Therefore the resonant frequency of individual SRR will indicate the dielectric
properties of the MUT around the ring and also its location within the array [8].
4. METAMATERIALS IN MEDICAL IMAGING
A super lens or perfect lens is a lens which uses metamaterials to go beyond the diraction limit. The
diraction limit is an inherent limitation in conventional optical devises or lenses. In 2000, a type of
lens was proposed, consisting of a metamaterial that compensates for wave decay and reconstructs
images in the near eld [9]. And most importantly the both propagating and evanescent waves
contribute to the resolution of the image. In 2004, the rst superlens with a negative refractive
index provided resolution three times better than the diraction limits and was demonstrated at
microwave frequencies. In 2005, the rst near eld superlens which exceeded the diraction limit
was demonstrated by N. Fang et al. [10].
The higher focusing resolution will be provided by at left-handed metamaterial (LHM) lens if
compared to convex dielectric lens and elliptical reector focusing system. High-resolution near-eld
microwave target detection and imaging with at LHM lens can be implemented which is shown in
Fig. 1(b) [11]. Due to higher focusing resolution the LHM lens has the potential to acquire higher
imaging resolution and easy in-depth scanning, which will simplify the detection system design [11].
5. METAMATERIALS IN MICROWAVE HYPERTHERMIA
Microwaves are used to destroy or ablate diseased soft-tissue by heating the tissue to a temperature
that causes cell death is called hyperthermia. The generator produces microwave energy which is
transmitted through the antennas and into the patient. Elevating the temperature of tumor cells
causes cell membrane damage, which leads to the destruction of the cancer cells. Hyperthermia
treatment of cancer requires directing a carefully controlled dose of heat to the cancerous tumor
and surrounding body tissue. The most prominent property of metamaterial lens is the ability
of negative-refractive index (NRI) to focus the electromagnetic eld of a source [11]. Hence it
can generate appropriate focusing spot in biological tissue as required in microwave hyperthermia
treatment shown in Fig. 1(c) [12]. Flat metamaterial slab has been used as a lens to focus microwave
370 PIERS Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 1: (a) Two dimensional organic tissue analysis. (b) Imaging. (c) Hyperthermia treatment.
energy emitted from the microwave source. In this, a planar array of split-ring resonators placed
between two parallel metallic plates and it is fed by a small loop antenna to excite the split-rings [13].
Further the convenient adjustment of position of focusing or heating spot in tissue region gives
the great potential to successful microwave hyperthermia [14]. By moving the source, the heating
spot in tissue can be adjusted, without any complex deployment and control system as required in
the conventional array applicator [12]. Recently, conformal microwave array applicators proposed
with proper source spacing, low loss left-handed metamaterial lens can be useful for hyperthermia
treatment of large area tumors. In this, microwave hyperthermia can be performed by joint heating
of multiple microwave sources [14].
6. METAMATERIALS IN WIRELESS STRAIN SENSING
RF-microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) strain sensors that take advantage of the recent ad-
vances in metamaterials. A wireless strain sensor to monitor the healing processes of fractured
long bones has been developed by R. Melik et al.. Approximately 10% of the fractures do not heal
properly because of the inability to monitor fracture healing. The SRR-based sensor displays a
characteristic resonance frequency under no load, by measuring the magnitude of operating fre-
quency shift under applied load; the progression of fracture healing can be monitored [15]. Initially,
the single SRR based wireless metamaterial strain sensor was developed and then the nested SRR
based strain sensor developed to enhance the sensitivity. The nested metamaterial-based strain
sensors incorporate multiple SRRs in a compact nested architecture on a single chip to signi-
cantly achieve enhanced sensitivity in telemetric sensing [16]. By comparing the parameters such
as unloaded operating frequency, sensitivity and nonlinearity errors of the nested SRR based strain
sensor outperforms the classical SRR sensor [16].
7. METAMATERIAL ABSORBERS FOR SAR REDUCTION
Specic absorption rate is a measure of how much radiation is absorbed by human body, given in
Watts per kilogram (W/kg). The basic principle behind the metamaterial absorbers is, when one
of the eective medium parameter is negative and the other is positive, the medium will display
a stop band. The stop band of metamaterials can be designed at operating bands of cellular
phone. The SRRs has been designed to operate at 900 and 1800 MHz bands [17]. The structure
parameters of SRRs were chosen in order to be the eective medium parameter is negative around
900 and 1800 MHz bands. The use of metamaterial absorber is compared with other SAR reduction
techniques such as ferrite sheet attachment and the use of perfect electric conductor which shows the
use of metamaterials can reduce the peak for 22.2% [17]. The ferrite sheet attachment can reduce
the peak SAR eectively but the degradation on radiated power from antenna is also signicant.
Compared to the use of ferrite sheet, the metamaterials can be designed at the desired operating
frequency. The metamaterials can be designed on circuit board so it may be easily integrated to
the cellular phone [17].
8. CONCLUSION
There is growing need for engineers and physicists to concentrate and develop equipments speci-
cally suitable for healthcare. Metamaterials is one of the active eld of research in the past decade
which has potential application in healthcare. This paper summarizes the extensive use of metama-
terials in biomedical applications. In particular, an overview of the existing metamaterial antennas
designed to operate at ISM band and the use of metamaterials in cancer detection, imaging, mi-
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Taipei, March 2528, 2013 371
crowave hyperthermia, strain sensing, and reduction of SAR are presented. Apart from these,
metamaterials are also applied in glucose monitoring for diabetes management. Also, the use of
resorbable metamaterials will overcome the issues associated with retrieval of implantable devices
after their operational lifetime. The metamaterials in biomedical applications opens a wide area of
research in the near future.
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