Skin Artifact Removal Algorithms for Radar-based Microwave Breast Cancer Detection

Microwave radar imaging has widely come to notice as a promising tool for breast cancer detection. One of the main challenges in radar-based microwave imaging of the breast is the overwhelming amount of the skin reflections, which can make the imaging system end in failure if not suppressed effectively. This study takes this problem under consideration by comparing the performance of several artifact removal algorithms. Three-dimensional Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulations are performed to numerically evaluate the functionality of these algorithms. To provide a more informative comparison, different scenarios are investigated to include the effect of tumor location and also skin thickness variations. Appropriate performance metrics are utilized to quantitatively appraise the algorithms. Finally, a hybrid artifact removal algorithm is introduced which remarkably enhances skin artifact removal.

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