Advances in real-time non-contact monitoring of medical thermal treatment through multistatic array microwave imaging

In this paper, we present some recent advances in real-time non-contact monitoring of thermal treatment through multistatic array imaging. The work presented was primarily motivated by the need to improve the flexibility and computational efficiency of the forward modeling of microwave imaging systems in general and of our real-time microwave thermal monitoring system in particular. Specifically, we have developed a conformal finite-difference time domain (CFDTD) solver that addresses several limitations inherent to our previously reported forward modeling methods. In particular, this CFDTD solver has enabled the implementation of a fully integrated numerical vector Green's function that addresses the task of linking the object's scattered field to the measured scattered voltage in a more general and flexible way than the waveport vector Green's function method used in our earlier work. Both the CFDTD solver and the integrated numerical Green's function are validated for a prototype microwave imaging cavity through comparison with CST Microwave Studio. These validated methods are currently being used in an ongoing experimental characterization of microwave imaging for both dielectric reconstruction and real-time thermal monitoring.