  The bone quality is asociated with changes in its dielectric properties
(permittivity and conductivity). The feasibility of detecting changes in these
properties is evaluated using a tomographic array of 16 monopole antennas with
z-polarized microwaves at 1.3GHz. The direct problem was evaluated
computationally with the Finite-Difference-Time-Domain (FDTD) method. Local and
global sensitivity analysis were considered for identifiyng the parameters that
most affect the detection. We observed that the direct problem is highly
sensitive to the conductivity of the tissues that surround the calcaneus and
the one of the calcaneus itself. Global and local sensitivity methods have
shown evidences for feasible detection of variation in dielectric properties of
bone.
