Microwave detection of breast cancer

Breast cancer affects many women, and early detection aids in fast and effe ctive treatment. Mammography, which is currently the most popular method of breast screening, has some limitations, and microwave imaging offers an at tractive alternative, A microwave system for breast tumor detection that us es previously introduced confocal microwave imaging techniques is presented in this paper. The breast is illuminated with an ultrawide-band pulse and a synthetic scan of the focal paint is used to detect tumors: however, the geometric configuration and algorithms are different from those previously used. The feasibility of using small antennas for tumor detection is invest igated. Signal processing algorithms developed to mitigate the dominant ref lection from the skin are described, and the effectiveness of these skin su btraction algorithms is demonstrated. Images of homogeneous and heterogeneo us breast models are reconstructed with various numbers of antennas. Both t he influence of antenna spacing and the suitability of simplified models fo r system evaluation are examined.