In vitro and in vivo measurement for biological applications using micromachined probe

Abstract

We developed a small-sized micromachined probe for the measurement of biological properties using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. We also experimentally showed the suitability of the micromachined probe for biological applications through in vivo, as well as in vitro measurements of various types of tissue. We measured the permittivities of 0.9% saline and the muscle and fat of pork using the micromachined probe after liquid calibration. The measured permittivities of 0.9% saline and pork agreed well with both the expected values of the Cole-Cole equation along with the measured values obtained through the use of a 1-mm-diameter open-ended coaxial probe. We also performed in vivo measurements of breast cancer tissue implanted in an athymic nude mouse to show the suitability of the small-sized micromachined probe for practical biological applications. Through the obtained data, the capability of the micromachined probe of distinguishing different tissue types from one another was shown. The actual aperture size of the micromachined probe is only 240 /spl mu/m /spl times/ 70 /spl mu/m and, therefore, we can extract the biological information from very small biological tissues and drastically decrease the invasiveness of this method through the implementation of the small probe created through the use of MEMS technology.