A Hand-Held, Single-Sided NMR Sensor for Full-Thickness Skin Detection

To rapidly assess burn depth, a hand-held, single-sided nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) sensor was designed for full-thickness skin detection. The sensor is composed of a single-sided magnet, a radio frequency coil, a matching circuit, and an aluminum shell. The permanent magnet array was optimized using the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) with low vertical gradient strength and each layer obtaining maximal uniformity in field of view (FOV). The actual measured magnetic field of the single-sided magnet is perfect match with the simulation results. Experimental results of depth–transverse relaxation time (
${T}_{{2}}{)}$
map prove that this sensor has high sensitivity to distinguish deep dermal and full-thickness burns and superficial partial-thickness burns.