Determination of terahertz permittivity of dehydrated biological samples

A key step in transforming terahertz imaging to a practical medical imaging modality lies in understanding the interactions between terahertz (THz) waves and biological tissues. Most of the models in the literature use the permittivity of liquid water to simulate the THz-tissue interactions, but they often neglect contributions from the biological background such as proteins and lipids because dehydrated biological samples are experimentally difficult to prepare. In this work, we present a method to prepare thin and flat dehydrated samples which can be easily handled and measured in a transmission setup. Our results will provide fundamental parameters for modelling THz-tissue interactions.