A Wearable Microwave Antenna Array for Time-Domain Breast Tumor Screening

Abstract

Abstract-In this work, we present a clinical prototype with a wearable patient interface for microwave breast cancer detection. The long-term aim of the prototype is a breast health monitoring application. The system operates using multistatic time-domain pulsed radar, with 16 flexible antennas embedded into a bra. Unlike the previously reported, table-based prototype with a rigid cup-like holder, the wearable one requires no immersion medium and enables simple localization of breast surface. In comparison with the table-based prototype, the wearable one is also significantly more cost-effective and has a smaller footprint. To demonstrate the improved functionality of the wearable prototype, we here report the outcome of daily testing of the new, wearable prototype on a healthy volunteer over a 28-day period. The resulting data (both signals and reconstructed images) is compared to that obtained with our table-based prototype. We show that the use of the wearable prototype has improved the quality of collected volunteer data by every investigated measure. This work demonstrates the proof-of-concept for a wearable breast health monitoring array, which can be further optimized in the future for use with patients with various breast sizes and tissue densities.

Modeling of the dielectric properties of biological tissues within the histology region

“…This bandwidth was selected as it encompasses the frequencies of interest in many microwave medical applications. For example, it includes most microwave imaging systems, with frequencies spanning 1.3 GHz to 8 GHz [2], [4], [22]- [25]. It also encompasses general ablation systems (2.45 GHz, [7], [20]) and proposed breast hyperthermia (4.2-4.5 GHz, [6]).…”

An Overview of Uwb Antennas for Microwave Imaging Systems for Cancer Detection Purposes

“…The mentioned findings were the basis for the design shown on Figure 13. The 16 elements array was mounted on a bra using kapton as a substrate, and this is considered as an innovative, comfortable and portable design, and therefore more profitable, achieving a better quality of the acquired data and the position of the breast tissue with respect to the array [48].…”

“…Using the same type of dielectric material as in [48], Wang and Arslan [49] present a Co-Planar Waveguide (CPW)-fed UWB antenna on a DuPont Kapton substrate with fractal patterns as can be seen in Figure 14. Nowadays, there has been an expanding quantity of literature of fractal UWB antennas [23-26, 50, 51].…”

“…As in previous (a) (b) Figure 13. The wearable prototype: (a) photograph of the outside of the bra showing the SMA cables that connect to the antennas (the bra is sitting on a breast model) [48] and (b) fitted to a volunteer with cables [48].…”

Electromagnetic Performances Analysis of an Ultra-wideband and Flexible Material Antenna in Microwave Breast Imaging: To Implement A Wearable Medical Bra

“…Later, researchers from the University of Bristol developed an ultra-wideband (UWB) microwave imaging system operated at frequencies from 4.5–10 GHz utilizing the cavity-backed patch antennas12. Extensive studies have been conducted to develop a microwave imaging system that utilizes dielectric resonator antennas, dipole antennas slot antennas, patch antennas, MEMS-steerable antennas, Horn antennas and Vivaldi antennas13. The aforementioned antennas have some limitations, such as the requirement of matching liquid, thereby increasing the complexity and the antenna volume as well as creating discomfort for patients and incompatibility in the array.…”