Skin Surface Feature Influence on Terahertz in vivo Measurements

Although terahertz waves have been used in various in vivo skin studies, hitherto, very little attention has been given to the skin surface features. Quantitative studies are of great importance to analyze their effects on the characterization of skin and skin modeling. We use Lumerical FDTD and Comsol to simulate the influence on the THz reflectivity for different hydration levels, polarizations and frequencies. Considerably large errors are observed, suggesting that the influence should be carefully considered in THz skin measurements.