Design and Implementation of Biomedical Antenna Arrays for Breast Cancer Detection and Diagnosis.

Abstract

Tumors are grown when cells division occurs abnormally fast and turns into a lump that could be benign or cancerous. It is widely known among oncologists and even publics that chances of successful cancer treatment increase when the disease is detected in an early stage. This is, and for many types of this disease, absolutely accurate before the tumor gets larger and more difficult to cure. Doctors may use many approaches to detect cancer such as the physical exam, laboratory tests, imaging tests, and the most definitive cancer diagnosis technique known as biopsy. Imaging tests may include a bone scan, ultrasound X-ray mammography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computerized tomography (CT) scan, positron emission tomography (PET) scan, and others. As these approaches have many disadvantages, other detection procedures that are easier for the patients and more accurate are explored. Research is being done in the area of microwave imaging to replace the traditional detection techniques. It seems that waves used by cellular phones to transmit and receive data have all the requirements to be used also for medical imaging purposes. The technique is based on the fact that a tumor has a higher water level than a normal tissue, which means higher dielectric properties leading to the reflection of the penetrating waves. Therefore, a tumor could be detected in the reconstructed microwave image. Proposed antennas are conformable with the requirements to be used in systems for early cancer detection. Multiple microstrip patch antennas are designed for this purpose. Different novel shapes with operational frequencies falling between 3.1 GHz and 10.6 GHz are obtained with narrow and ultra-wide frequency bands. To verify the approach, simulations are performed near normal and infected breast phantoms. The final output of the system is a decision on whether the breast under test is infected or not. In case it is, another decision is made on the size and the position of the tumor.