Terahertz imaging and spectroscopy of skin cancer

Studies in terahertz (THz) imaging have revealed a difference between diseased and healthy tissue in the THz regime. Since water has strong absorptions at THz frequencies, a likely contributing factor to the contrast mechanism is variation in water content. We have previously modelled the propagation of a THz waveform through water and normal skin in the time domain. In these preliminary results, we extract the complex dielectric coefficients from THz spectroscopy measurements of diseased tissue and predict the waveform differences which have been seen in THz images of skin cancer.