Zappia, Sonia (2023) Non-Destructive Analysis of Industrial and Biomedical Samples via Advanced TeraHertz Imaging. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Abstract

Terahertz (THz) imaging is the newest among non-invasive sensing technologies and currently a huge attention is pointed towards its use in several applications. The motivations behind the interest in THz imaging systems can be found in the advantages offered by this technology, including high spatial resolution, use of non-ionizing radiation, and ability to penetrate non-conductive materials like glass, plastic, and cardboard. However, THz potential is still at its early stage and far to be completely assessed and a lot of work remains to be done towards the final industrial implementation and competitiveness of THz technologies. This thesis aims at the exploration of the potential of THz imaging in the field of food and biomedical industries performing controlled experiments and developing processing techniques to enhance THz capabilities in non destructive inspection (NDI) and material characterization. Regarding the first research activity, it is known that the detection of foreign body contamination, packaging failures, and items with poor characteristics is a significant concern in the food industry. In this respect, THz systems offer a promising solution due to their non-invasive ability to detect surface defects and foreign bodies contaminations. The thesis aims to perform controlled experiments in order to show the effectiveness of THz technologies in detecting and imaging the presence of contaminants on the surface or a few millimeters deep inside food products. This could open up various possibilities for industrial applications. The second research activity focuses on the use of THz imaging for the characterization of magnetic scaffolds (MagS), which are used in various biomedical applications. Due to the wide use of MagS in several medical treatments, there is an increasing demand of advanced techniques for their non-destructive quality assessment procedures in order to verify the absence of defects and the distribution of the magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) contained in the MagS. In fact, the manufacturing process is often associated with a non uniform őnal spatial distribution of MNPs loading in the biomaterial, which could compromise the therapeutic efficacy of MagS. This thesis proposes a new approach for MagS characterization using THz imaging, a topic not investigated by the scientiőc community previously. The proposed approach allows for a quantitative characterization of MagS in terms of their estimated thickness and refractive index. Additionally, it enables to identify the areas of the scaffold wherein MNPs are mainly concentrated and thus, it gives us information about MNPs spatial distribution.

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