Molecular and structural preservation of dehydrated bio-tissue for THz spectroscopy

Abstract

Terahertz transmission through freshly excised biological tissue is limited by the tissue's high water content. Tissue fixation methods that remove water, such as fixation in Formalin, destroy the structural information of proteins hence are not suitable for THz applications. Dehydration is one possible method for revealing the tissue's underlying molecular structure and components. In this study, we measured the THz responses over time of dehydrating fresh, necrotic and lyophilized rat tissue. Our results show that as expected, THz absorption increases dramatically with drying and tissue freshness can be maintained through lyophilization. Dehydrated biological tissue with retained molecular structure can be useful for future laser-based THz wave molecular analysis.