Microwave Tomography for Hydration Assessment in Newborn Cattle: In Silico Proof of Concept

Dehydration is a leading cause of mortality in newborn cattle. While physical signs of dehydration are visible at 6% loss of body weight, diarrheal disease can quickly cause life-threatening dehydration. Tissue permittivity is proposed as a method of continuously monitoring hydration in calves. For an initial proof of concept, standard microwave tomography algorithms are applied to a realistic cross-section of a calf neck. A series of images are generated with permittivity perturbed to represent changes in hydration. The bulk permittivity is estimated using the average properties of the image and a close relationship between the reconstructed values and ground truth hydration permittivity is seen.