A Prototype System for Early-Stage Breast Cancer Detection

Abstract

The early detection of breast cancer is very important. The final goal of this study is to develop an inexpensive portable device for simply detecting the existence of breast cancer using microwaves. In this study, we proposed a detection algorithm and the system configuration of such a device. The feasibility of the proposed method was investigated by numerical simulation and actual measurement. A prototype sensing module was fabricated, and the measurement results for tumor phantoms were presented. The measurement results showed that the prototype sensing module worked well, and the simulation results revealed that the detection rate of the device could be about 60% for a 4 mm tumor and almost 100% for a 6 mm tumor. The proposed device can be used for the self-diagnosis of breast cancer. Further study is required to reduce the size of the sensing module.Key Words: Breast Cancer, Detection Algorithm, Diagnosis, Microwaves. Manuscript received May 4, 2015 ; Revised June 26, 2015 ; Accepted July 7, 2015. (ID No. 20150504-024J) 1 Department of Radio and Information Communication Engineering, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea. 2 Radio Technology Research Department, ETRI, Daejeon, Korea. * Corresponding Author: Guk-Jin Yi (e-mail: yigukjin@gmail.com) and Jeong-Ki Pack (e-mail: jkpack@cnu.ac.kr) This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ⓒ Copyright The Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science. All Rights Reserved. YI et al.: A PROTOTYPE SYSTEM FOR EARLY-STAGE BREAST CANCER DETECTION 159phones. The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has been developing an MT system for breast cancer diagnosis, and similar studies have been performed in 10]. Recently, Z-tech Company proposed a simple system utilizing the property that current can flow more easily through tumor tissue than through normal tissue [16].The objective of the current study is to develop an inexpensive breast cancer detection system at an early stage using microwaves that can also be used for self-test or self-diagnosis. The purpose of this system is to determine whether breast cancer exists or not.Tumor detection at microwave frequencies is based on the significant contrast in dielectric properties between malignant tumors and normal fatty breast tissues [17]. In this study, the system configuration as and the detection algorithm of a simple breast cancer detection system was proposed, and the feasibility of the system was investigated. A prototype sensing module was fabricated, and the measurement results for tumor phantoms were presented. II. DETECTION ALGORITHMThe scattered signal from an object illuminated by a transmitting antenna to the receiving antennas, as shown in Fig. 1, can be described by the following wave Eq. (1) or ...

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