On Microwave Breast Imaging with Ultrasound Spatial Priors

Abstract

We investigate the use of ultrasound images as prior structural information (also known as ultrasound spatial priors) to guide microwave breast imaging so as to enhance its achievable complex permittivity images. In the main approach considered herein, the edges within the discretized ultrasound compressibility image are fed as spatial priors into a microwave imaging algorithm. It is shown that this method requires minimal post-processing of the ultrasound image and can enhance the achievable microwave image accuracy. It is also demonstrated that small tumours can still go undetected in microwave breast imaging using this method if their edges are missing from the spatial priors.

A Multiplicative Regularizer Augmented with Spatial Priors for Microwave Imaging

“…This Communication is focused on a method to inject prior structural information, also known as spatial priors (SP), into the inversion algorithm. These SP may come from a different higher-resolution imaging modality such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [1] or ultrasound imaging [2], [3]. For example, in [4], an image registration approach was proposed to use MRI images in MWI reconstruction.…”