Evaluating System Design in Breast Microwave Sensing: Data and Image Quality in Multiple Systems

Numerous microwave-based breast imaging (MBI) systems have been developed to investigate the potential of microwave-based breast cancer detection. Despite the diversity in system design, relatively little research has compared systems and evaluated the impact of design parameters. This work evaluates the spatial resolution, noise, and shift-dependence of three imaging systems. These systems vary with respect to key design parameters and have been designed for different purposes - a bed-based system was designed for deployment to a permanent clinic, a bench-top system was designed for laboratory use, and a portable prototype system was designed for deployment to remote communities. The bed-based system was found to have the best spatial resolution with respect to both image and data quality, achieving a best-case resolution of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">(12.4± 0.5)mm</tex> , and the best signal-to-noise ratio of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">(26± 2)\ dB</tex> .