Determination of pregnancy using microwaves

In today's life, microwave technology is used in both diagnostic and therapeutic procedure. This letter presents the study of dielectric properties of pregnant women urine as well normal women urine at microwave frequencies. In vitro measurements using cavity perturbation technique is employed in the frequency range between 2 and 3 GHz. It is observed that dielectric constant of pregnant women urine samples is smaller than the normal women urine samples and the conductivity of pregnant women urine samples is higher than that of normal women urine samples, which is a novel alternative in vitro method of determining pregnancy, and is required for a woman to make preparations for proper prenatal care and family planning. The same samples are subjected to investigations in the clinical laboratory for quantitative analysis, which holds good for our microwave study. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.