Assessment of the Feasibility of Breast Lesion Detection with Contrast Source Inversion for Microwave Tomography: A Virtual Experiment

In this paper, the microwave tomography performed using the contrast source inversion method was investigated. A two-dimensional model problem, composed of a cylindrical phantom positioned at the center of the receiving antennas' circular distribution, provided the setup for virtual experiments. Both a homogeneous phantom, with electrical properties that approximate the ones of a dense breast, and several heterogeneous phantoms, with an inclusion whose high electrical properties simulate those of a breast lesion, were considered. The effect of the initial guess on the reconstruction of the homogeneous phantom was assessed for a first investigation. Then, the detectability of the inclusion in the heterogeneous phantom was tested varying its size, position, and electrical properties. Results suggested that a priori information is useful to build a robust initial guess. The inclusion was detectable in the permittivity maps independently of the considered dimension and position, whereas structured noise was predominant in the conductivity maps.