Dielectric properties of ocular tissues in the supercooled and frozen states.

Values of the relative permittivity and conductivity of the rabbit retina and lens have been measured between 10 MHz and 10 GHz over the temperature range 20 to -20 degrees C. As the temperature was lowered from 20 degrees C the dielectric parameters changed smoothly until -9 degrees C where freezing occurred. At this temperature a sharp transition was observed in both conductivity and relative permittivity, the latter falling to a value of below 10 over most of the frequency range. Analysis shows that this is due to the unfreezable water, from which a value of lens hydration is calculated. This value agrees with that obtained previously at 37 degrees C using conventional dielectric mixture theory, but the associated margin of error is much smaller.