Microwave tech turns clothes into wearable diagnostics
24 Nov 2025
Specialists at a Finnish university are developing a series of wearables that use microwave technology, in order to cut diagnostic delays faced by patients who lack easy access to medical facilities.
Breast cancer detecting bras, leg sleeves that alert to blood clots and a helmet that doubles as a radiation therapy monitor are among the products being prototyped by
senior researcher Mariella Särestöniemi and her colleagues at the University of Oulu’s Human Body Twin Laboratory.
With 5.6 million people in an area of 130 sq miles, Finland has less than a tenth of the population of England alone, spread over 2.5 times the land mass.
Despite a well-developed health system, the distances involved for many patients to travel for specialist treatment and monitoring can create delays to diagnosis and monitoring.
Wearable devices offer the chance of early and speedy home detection and the chance to attend preliminary scans locally, explained Särestöniemi.
“Instead of having to travel hundreds of kilometres to a hospital for examinations, a person could go to their local health centre for a quick preliminary scan. This new technology thus increases regional equality in healthcare,” she stated.
“It takes only a few nanoseconds for a microwave signal to pass through, for example, the head. The measurement process is quick and effortless.”
Among the technologies are tumour-detecting bras designed to overcome aversion to mammographic investigations perceived as time consuming and uncomfortable. Also, pull-on sleeves that can check for clot formation.
More recently, the Oulu team has pioneered novel headgear to monitor radiation therapy.
Antennas around the helmet enable transmission of microwave signals to determine whether treatment has been effective in shrinking brain tumours.
While the impact of radiation therapy needs to be checked regularly, said Särestöniemi, the cost of imaging methods or the dangers of using further radiation limits the use of many existing methods.
“Microwave technology is considered very promising and is already undergoing clinical testing in European hospitals,” she added.
Research remains ongoing with applications not in general use. However, the university said it hoped to establish the products in local health centres within the decade.
Pic: Särestöniemi in the Human Body Twin Laboratory, with a head phantom used to study signal propagation in brain tissue; a wearable breast cancer detection vest is displayed on a mannequin in the background.
