Refractometric THz Sensing of Blood Components in a Photonic Crystal Fiber Platform

An efficient blood component detection process is essential for the diagnosis of hematologic diseases. This paper presents refractive index-based terahertz (THz) sensing with photonic crystal fiber (PCF) for the identification of the various blood components. An octagonal hollow-core surrounded by symmetrical air holes structured cladding PCF is designed and the sensing performances investigated using COMSOL Multiphysics (v.5.3a) with a finite element method. The proposed PCF geometry provides a significant improvement in the identification of blood components, nearly 99% for all the tested substances (RBC, hemoglobin, WBC, plasma, and water) at 4.5 THz operating frequency. Additionally, negligible confinement loss of 10(-16 +/- 1) dB/cm is attained around the same operating region. Furthermore, dispersion, effective area, effective material loss, and numerical aperture are found to be highly satisfactory and on par with published results, thus further ensuring the suitability of the use of the presented PCF in THz sensing. Practical implementation feasibilities in the existing manufacturing technologies are also discussed in detail.

Automated summary

This paper presents an efficient blood component detection process using a combination of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and terahertz (THz) sensing. The proposed method achieves nearly 99% identification accuracy for various blood components at a 4.5 THz operating frequency. The PCF geometry provides satisfactory performance in terms of dispersion, effective area, effective material loss, and numerical aperture, making it suitable for THz sensing.