RF monitoring of commercial vascular stents with dipole scattering resonances

We have compared measurements and simulations of the microwave forward scattering of several commercial coronary stents. We immerse the stents in water to replicate the permittivity of biological tissues and find that their dipole scattering resonances can be detected at frequencies close to 300 MHz even though the stents are not purposely designed to facilitate such detection. We discuss how stent resonances can be used to monitor restenosis with non-invasive and non-ionizing techniques.