Avicenna Medical Artificial Intelligence
Avicenna AI is spin off IBW Watson Health company and is first to develop artificial intelligent to interpret radiology images.
Artificial intelligent will be used in many fields and will continue to grow in the medical applications.
Avicenna was first known physician who documented symptoms vs. treatments in medical field. To this day his technique and medical contents are being taught in universities.
Avicenna is latinized version of better known in the original language, Ibn Cina (or Sina) in East.
5G Safety Concern
ORTENGA has received many requests to look into 5G Health concern of this new technology. Although, ORTENGA does not provide consulting services of the impact of 5G electromagnetic waves on biological tissues and human interaction, ORTENGA is sharing information with consumers and its clients, so that they can be in better position to make the judgement themselves.
What we don’t know?
Since 1970’s, although many researches have been conducted to assess the impact of electromagnetic fields and/or radiation on human body and/or tissues, there is no concrete conclusion of that impact or interactions. Regardless, there is working equipment which can be used to assess cause and effect in systematic and/or scientific manner.
What we know
Let’s delve into some of the equipment and discover how they interact with human body in statistical sense. By Statistical sense, it is meant that although human body is complex and does not necessarily every individual (considering race, gender, age, state of minds, etc.) have the same response to various stimuluses (in this case electromagnetic fields) but overall most of the population under the study would have the same/similar reaction.
Human body response to Electromagnetic fields and waves depends on:
- Frequency of operations
- Strength of the Electromagnetic fields
- Whether it is soft or hard tissue
In other words, safety of exposure to electromagnetic radiation depends on all of the above. Consequently to draw any scientific conclusions all of the above metrics have to be considered and tracked for any meaningful case study.
Frequency of Operations
Radio waves are anywhere between KHz, e.g. AM radio, way below 1GHz, to RF1 up to 6GHz, and into mmW bands up to 60GHz, 802.11ad/ay.
The changes in operating frequencies are ~8 orders of magnitudes, i.e. 108 or 100 million times differences. That is significant range of operating frequencies, AM radio to mmW into 60GHz, and nothing that we know of behaves in the same way over that extreme wide frequency range, equipment and/or human body. Therefore, let’s breakdown the radio waves operating frequency to the following use cases and evaluate case by case.
Use Case 1: Magnetic Resonance Imaging, aka MRI, equipment used for imaging of soft tissues is typically operates at 1T or 1.5T in case of Human subjects. One Tesla, 1T, is equivalent to 10000 Gauss, G. Earth magnetic field is 0.5G, to put Tesla unit into perspective.
About 75% of human body weight is comprised of water. The resonance frequency of water is function of magnetic field strength. Resonance frequency can be considered the frequency at which the water molecules have tendency to oscillate naturally.
The relationship between human body soft tissue resonance frequency and magnetic field strength is per following:
Where, B, f, and gama are Magnetic field, frequency, and Gyromagnetic ratio, respectively.
Therefore, 1T and 1.5T magnetic fields yield 42.xx and 63.yy MHz operating frequencies, respectively. Observe that as the magnetic field increases the water resonance frequency also increases with direct proportion.
In other words, for imaging soft tissues, e.g. muscle, brain, internal organs, the MRI equipment operate at ~42 or ~63 MHz. The impact to human body is known to be negligible so long as the body stays stationary inside the MRI magnet. In case of movement inside of the MRI magnet, there is Eddy Current generation that could potentially harm and cause in comfort to the patient. Therefore, there is trade-off between a non-invasive imaging to diagnose any potential issue versus minimal risk to put the body under strong magnetic field for duration of the test only.
Use Case 2: 802.15.6 is Standard which addresses Wearable sensor for human body applications. Although the allocated operating frequency covers 2.4GHz ISM band, but the lower frequency edge is 20 MHz, which is known to be providing better coupling between the sensors and human body.
Use Case 3: Cellular phone operating frequencies are typically between 1 – 2 GHz. The strength of the cellular phone electromagnetic radiation must be less than 1.6W/Kg per FCC regulations. Human head weights about 4.5 to 5 Kg. The maximum permissible operating power of the cellular phone is ~23dBm, 250mW, or 0.25W. This is the amount of transmitter power in the case the cellular phone being at the farthest location from the nearest cellular base station which provides connectivity, a rare/edge scenario. These numbers are calculated for impact to the user of the cellular phone and don’t apply to second hand individual near to another user. Also, we are mixing near field, user’s head proximity, with far field radiation, just to have some baseline for this calculation. Typical operating point of cellular phone is around ~10mW, or 0.01W. Therefore, human head exposure to electromagnetic energy to be transmitted to the base station is numerically very low, compare to FCC regulations. Incoming phone calls power to the cellular phone are typically between -80 t o-100 dBm, which are 90 to 110 dB below the typical cellular phone in transition mode. 90 and 110 dB below power means 1 down to 1/100 billion times smaller, respectively. In other words, the worst case radiation is when one is transmitting via cellular phone, i.e. receiving mode is much more benign.
The question still remains are these levels of exposure safe for human at the operating frequencies of cellular phone.
Based on the Example 3 calculations, it is safe to assume the exposure of electromagnetic radiation to nearby or bystanders’ people (i.e. not the person who is using mobile phone) are way below FCC regulations. We don’t know if that is safe, but we know it is low relative to FCC regulations.
In other words, if you don’t believe cellular phones are safe, so long as you are not the one using them, you can safely assume to be statistically unharmed if other people use them.
Use Case 4: Hyperthermia or Heat Treatment is a technique which some Oncologists utilize to decelerate or destroy/kill cancer tumor non-invasively using electromagnetic radiation pointed only at the malignant tumor cells. By increasing the blood flow and temperature of the tumor cells to about ~44°C, the human cells are dying.
Hyperthermia equipment is typically operating between 100 – 900 MHz operating frequency range. The optimum frequency depends on the volume of the tumor. For instance, for 3 – 4 cm3 tumor the optimum frequency is ~450 MHz. It is also well known that higher frequency provides better spatial resolution, i.e. more focused energy into the tumor and not its vicinity. The trade-off is between better spatial resolution and less power/energy penetration/absorption for/by the tissue.
Use Case 5: 5G RF2 is in mmW bands, at 24, 28, and 39 GHz. The mmW bands are near water molecules absorption frequency in gas or moisture in the air. It is well known at these frequencies; the Atmospheric Loss, AL, becomes significant in communication link between transmitter and receiver, i.e. less power is received by intended receiver for given transmitted power.
The following is AL in GHz spectrum range published by FCC, Bulletin Number 70, in July 1997.
The mmW power transmitted decays much faster over the air; consequently the range (the maximum distance between transmitter to receiver) is significantly shorter. This in turn dictates that transmitter power cannot be indiscriminately (in all direction) radiating for any useful purpose and requires pointing the energy/power to desired direction, i.e. actual end user.
5G will be relying on beamforming techniques to point the energy of the transmitter directly at the end user, receiver. Therefore, by standers will not be receiving any radio wave energy. In fact beamforming is part of 3GPP and 802.11ad/ay Standards, which operate in mmW bands, because of AL.
The beamforming is the technology which dynamically points the transmitter energy to mobile receiver in much less than seconds interval. In doing so, the receiver and transmitter are in continues communication about each other locations. The radiation pattern is pencil beam with couple of degrees Half Power Beamwidth, HPBW. To appreciate the directivity of pencil beam transmitter to receiver, you can touch your satellite dish slightly to move it, and you will be losing the signal completely (don’t do this, if you do not have adequate equipment and skills to put the satellite dish pointing back in the original direction).
5G technology is expected to be scalable for requested user data and availability of network. That means, if you are doing a voice call in 5G networks, you are not necessarily using 5G infrastructure for your call to go through, because that would be wasting significant radio network resources, and your call may be scale back down to legacy voice network with current networks.
Conclusions
The point is that if you are not the one who is having and using 5G or 802.11ad/ay new WiFi devices in mmW, then you are not being illuminated by 5G or 802.11ad/ay new WiFi transmitter.
That is not necessarily true about 4G/LTE, 3G/CDMA, 2G/GSM, 1G/AMPS, and legacy WiFi networks. In other words, 1G/2G/3G/4G, and legacy WiFi networks illuminates everyone in their coverage area regardless whether they are the actual end user for radio wave communications, whereas 5G networks illuminate the end mobile user.
MRI, Hyperthermia, and Wearable equipment focus below 1GHz operating frequency range, where actually coupling of electromagnetic energy into the human body is intended. As the frequency increases, the atmospheric loss of transmitted signal and penetration into human tissue decreases.
The mmW bands (well above 1 GHz) signals have much less penetrations capability into human body and have significant loss through air relative to sub GHz bands.
In light of the above, can we say that 5G is safe technology?
What we could conclude is that 5G technology would not be any less safe than 4G/LTE, 3G/CDMA, 2G/GSM, and/or 1G/AMPS communication networks, while the service is used appropriately.
If you are not convinced on health safety of previous mobile communication generations, then you should continue your research for additional information to make appropriate conclusions.
ORTENGA is consulting firm which provides design and develop algorithms and HW modules, or customer specific projects in the field of wireless communications.
iSono
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