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Electromagnetic power absorption in biological tissues has recently received due scientific and public attention, particularly, in the areas of cellular communication and hyperthermic treatments. While efficient numerical algorithms, such as the finite difference time domain technique and the method of moments, have been developed as to obtain accurate power distributions in complicated configurations, their physical interpretation and explicit dependence on problem’s parameters are still difficult to achieve. In attempt to gain a clear insight into the electromagnetic power absorption mechanism as well as its estimation and relation to the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), we have recently proposed an infinite-extent current-sheet model. Herein, the model is further extended by incorporating finite-extent sources, i.e., electric and magnetic line-sources, exciting a highly lossy semi-infinite half-space. This modification results in deeper insight and understanding of the crucially important parameters, commonly involved in realistic configurations, namely, bounds and estimates on the power absorption and radiation efficiencies, local and total SAR coupling coefficients, and effective absorption dimensions. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of electromagnetic power absorption in biological tissues has recently become of increased scientific and public interest, particularly in the areas of cellular communication and hyperthermia systems. Electromagnetic power absorption in biological tissues is a well-known phenomenon. Its evaluation requires, in general, a solution of the three-dimensional frequency-dependent wave equation in complex configurations, which may necessitate quite massive analytical and numerical efforts. Herein, we focus on an elementary plane-wave model. The model establishes a tight estimate on the optimal (maximal/minimal) power absorption in realistic microwave configurations, in particular, cellular communications safety assessments. Furthermore, the absorption efficiency as well as the source impedance are obtained via explicit closed-form expressions, leading to an explicit maximal power absorption criterion for highly lossy tissues. The results depend continuously and explicitly on the physical parameters of biological tissues as well as on the plane-wave incidence angle and excitation source location. They are shown to be closely related to electromagnetic specific absorption rate estimations in biological tissues. In view of the well-known analogy between plane waves and rectangular waveguide modes, our results can be applied to optimization schemes of microwave heating and waveguide based therapeutic hyperthermia systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]