UWB Device for Microwave Imaging: Validation through Phantoms

Breast cancer detection is still a challenging subject, and this has forced physical, chemical and engineering research to explore new detection modalities. In this context, microwave imaging has received increasing attention in the last decades. Such effort has been encouraged by the fact that, at microwave frequencies, it is possible to distinguish between tissues with different dielectric constant values. In such framework, an innovative microwave instrument is presented here. The apparatus, consisting of 2 antennas operating in air, is completely safe and non-invasive since it does not emit any ionizing radiation and it does not require any breast crushing. We use Huygens Principle to provide fresh understanding into breast cancer detection. The algorithm based on this principle provides inhomogeneity maps of the dielectric properties (dielectric constant and/or conductivity) of different tissues, highlighting their contrast in the resulting final image. The experimental results on phantoms with different dielectric constants and inclusions are presented here. Moreover, on the basis of this analysis, we establish a modality to detect the presence of inclusions inside phantoms.