Realistic head phantom to test microwave systems for brain imaging

The fabrication of a realistic head phantom to test microwave-based brain imaging is presented. Low-cost mixtures of materials are used to construct the main head tissues (hair, scalp, skull, cerebral spinal fluid, grey, and white matters). The properties of the fabricated tissues are stable over a long time and agree well with the measured data available in the literature across the band of interest (1–4 GHz). Because no data is available concerning the electrical properties of human hair, extensive measurements are done to find the properties of real and artificial wig hair across the band 0.2–20 GHz. A wig is found to emulate reasonably well the properties of real hair. It is thus used as part of the fabricated phantom.