Antenna Position Layout and Frequency Impact on Tumor Detection in Microwave Breast Imaging

We present a systematic study in which we assess the antenna position layout and frequency point distribution of a MWI system, that can potentially improve tumor detection and minimize acquisition time. To this end, we performed measurements on a dry MW setup, using a slot-based antenna in the [2]–[5] GHz frequency range to scan an anthropomorphic breast phantom, with two different tumor positions, for 40 angular positions. Imaging and tumor-to-clutter ratio metric showed that there is a specific number of angular positions and frequency points beyond which the quality of imaging results does not increase substantially. We found the optimal frequency band for this kind of setup and that the use of lower frequencies seems more beneficial than the use of higher ones. Moreover, distributions of antenna position other from the regular circular one, should be explored further since it showed a decrease of imaging artefacts.