Studies of non-contact blood coagulation measurements with millimeter-wave spectroscopy

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Viktor Krozer, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Communication Technology and Networks, High-Frequency Technology and Photonic Systems, Signal Processing and Machine Learning for Information Technology ; Biophysics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465231288

The determination of blood coagulation is extremely important to discover bleeding disorders and cardiovascular diseases, as well as during COVID-19 infections. Nowadays blood coagulation tests require dedicated and expensive instruments and are time consuming due to the mechanical treatment necessary for accurate determination of blood coagulation. In addition, some tests are prone to errors when the drug intake is unclear, as for example in case of unconscious patients. It is fundamental for this kind of measurements to reduce the complexity and time of the procedures and to arrive a medication independent blood coagulation results. It would also be helpful to reduce the amount of blood sample required by the testing method. This project aims to study for the first time the coagulation characteristics of blood with a millimeter-wave spectroscopy system, which have been fundamentally confirmed by the applicants. The impact of medication on blood coagulation shall also be studied. This novel method is based on the change of dielectric properties of blood in case of coagulation and clot appearance. The testing method will be non-invasive and take only seconds, hence will be applicable to point-of-care situations. This enables in the future to perform blood coagulation studies in-vivo. The results from these studies will be compared to standard commercial blood coagulation tests, as well as to the recently developed ultrasound testing system by the applicants, which has already passed clinical tests.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants