Microwave Continuous Blood Glucose Monitoring Using Microgels-based Sensor

Microwave medical imaging and sensing (MMSI) operates within the frequency range of several hundred megahertz to several gigahertz. It has the potential to provide proactive healthcare solutions for both acute and chronic disease patients. This technology leverages tissue dielectric properties, employing quantitative or qualitative algorithms for disease diagnosis. MMSI has been proposed for applications such as cancer detection, stroke monitoring, cardiac imaging, skeletal imaging, and tracking of nanobots for in-body drug delivery. This paper proposes a novel microgel-based microwave sensing system for continuous blood glucose monitoring. The research contributions can be summarized in two main aspects. First, a novel microgel sensitive to the conditions of the internal microenvironment was synthesized and characterized. Second, a microwave sensing system was proposed to capture physiological signals from the human body and estimate blood glucose levels. Microgels serve as internal sensors, exhibiting different electrical properties based on changes in blood glucose information within the body, while external antennas are used to detect variations in dielectric constants. A new algorithm is presented for precise disease feature identification based on support vector machine. To validate the proposed system, the feasibility of classifying blood glucose into high and low levels was investigated. Compared to traditional microwave medical sensing methods without microgel sensors, the classification performance improved by 35%, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed system.