Near Field Imaging for Breast Cancer Detection by UWB Minimum Variance Beamforming

In this paper, we propose a near field imaging method for breast cancer detection by using coherent-signal-subspace-based wideband minimum variance beamforming. Transmitting the pulse and recording the backscattered signal at 13 antenna positions results in a 13-element array data. The received array data with artifact removal preprocessing is presented as near field model. By extending the coherent subspace method in the far field array processing problem to this near field problem, we develop the near field wideband coherent-signal-subspace-based minimum variance beamforming to construct the image of the breast with tumor embedded. This new method is applied to the computed finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) data to implement the simulation, and the results show that the tumor is clearly identified and localized