Advancing Microwave-Based Imaging Techniques for Medical Applications in the Wake of the 5G Revolution

After a long and complicated maturation process, one may observe that an increasing number of clinical assessments conducted with microwave-based imaging systems are in progress or ready to be started. Their returns are impatiently expected either to confirm the clinical relevance of microwaves as imaging modality or, on the contrary, to suggest new sensing approaches and/or other clinical applications. Beyond technical challenges stricto sensu, the moment seems appropriate to take some standoff for trying envisioning the possible future of microwaves-based imaging modalities in the today complex, widely open and rapidly mutating world we know today.The 5G revolution as well as Internet of Things (IoT) or Artificial Intelligence (AI) are filling, and even saturating, the media space in the same way that electromagnetic waves will invisibly saturate our surroundings. However beyond its supposed extreme, best and worst, consequences on our everyday life, it is just reasonable to imagine that 5G technology should be able to positively impact the development of microwave-based diagnosis imaging if properly combined with a mandatory reinforced and firmed cooperation with physicians and biologists. Indeed, it is they, and they alone, who in fine constitute the end users capable to judge the relevance of this new and last comer imaging modality. The proper exploitation of a more than ever galloping technology, closely inspired by the bio-medical community, is the key to boost the still modest clinical impact of microwave imaging observed until now. It should ultimately allow to decide if microwaves are "physically" able to do the job for gaining their full recognition among the already existing medical imaging modalities, while remaining available for other sensing scenarios.