Electromagnetic Radiation Effects and Measurement Devices

Electromagnetic fields from microwaves, radar, power lines, appliances, etc. are everywhere - in the workplace, the home, even on the roads we drive. Better health and safety standards are required for protection of humans and even vital animals like livestock or pets. Computer modeling can do much to enlighten us on how this radiation affects us: where it concentrates in the body, how it interacts, how far it penetrates. The proposed project will model pulsed electromagnetic radiation impinging on biological tissue. The method used is a variation of Helmholtz-Kirchhoff theory developed by Forward Vision that has been modified to account explicitly for the dispersive nature of living tissue and for time-dependent interactions. Using our new technique, we were able to reproduce the results of Albanese, et al.,2 that gave early warning of a potential health danger. Earlier demonstrated success of our theory at modeling wave propagation across arbitrary shapes and through multiple layers lends confidence for future success. The Phase I effort will have multiple parts. We will model the propagation of an electronmagnetic pulse into a dispersive medium with an irregular surface and use three-dimensional graphics to display the effects. We will verify the accuracy of the method in treating layered media by calculating the propagation of a harmonic wave into a nondispersive slab. Phase-dependent phenomena will be investigated through the propagation of a pulse into the same body. During the option period between Phases I and II, we propose to examine an electromagnetic pulse traversing a slab of the same shape but with dispersive properties. Following that, we wil begin a calculation describing a pulse penetrating a finite, irregularly shaped object composed of dispersive material. The work will be continued in Phase II, eventually leading to a set of algorithms to calculate energy deposited in the tissues and organs of the human body.