Conformal array antenna with the aspirator for the microwave mammography

Recently, the microwave imaging techniques attract attentions as a screening method of early breast cancer detection that takes place of an X-ray mammography. There are two categories of UWB radar [1] and microwave tomography [2]. A lot of basic experiments using the phantom have been reported [3]. For such experiments, antenna array and breast are soaked in the coupling liquid in order to maximize the amount of microwave energy coupled into the breast. In addition, we must know 3D surface of the breast to remove artifact reflected by skin using averaging technique in UWB radar or to solve ill-posed problem in microwave tomography [4].

[1]  B.D. Van Veen,et al.  An overview of ultra-wideband microwave imaging via space-time beamforming for early-stage breast-cancer detection , 2005, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.

[2]  K. Paulsen,et al.  Nonlinear Microwave Imaging for Breast-Cancer Screening Using Gauss–Newton's Method and the CGLS Inversion Algorithm , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

[3]  Q. Liu,et al.  Active Microwave Imaging II: 3-D System Prototype and Image Reconstruction From Experimental Data , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[4]  Barry D. Van Veen,et al.  Estimating the Breast Surface Using UWB Microwave Monostatic Backscatter Measurements , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[5]  Kenta Suzuki,et al.  Microwave mammography using multi-static UWB radar , 2009, 2009 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium.