Gender differences in facial skin dielectric constant measured at 300 MHz

Background/purpose Skin tissue dielectric constant (TDC) measurements at 300 MHz provide non-invasive data on free and bound tissue water. TDC-data is available for some body sites, but most is for female forearm. Contrastingly, there are no data on face-skin or comparative data between genders. Our goals were to obtain facial-TDC reference values and determine if TDC-values differ between genders. Methods TDC was measured at forehead, cheek, and forearm in 60 young adults (30 men) to a 1.5-mm depth. Measured TDC-values were compared with TDC-values calculated using skin-thickness data. Results Measured TDC-values ranged from 39.6 similar to +/-similar to 2.9 at male-forehead to 28.2 similar to +/-similar to 2.4 at female forearm and were significantly different (P similar tosimilar to cheek similar to>forearm. Male TDC-values were greater than female TDC-values (P similar to