Brick-Shaped Antenna Module for Microwave Brain Imaging Systems

In this letter, we describe and validate a microwave antenna designed for an imaging device for the diagnosis and monitoring of cerebrovascular pathologies. The antenna consists of a printed monopole immersed in a parallelepipedic block of semiflexible material with custom-permittivity, which allows to avoid the use of liquid coupling media and enables a simple array arrangement. The “brick” is built with a mixture of urethane rubber and graphite powder. The -10 dB frequency band of the antenna is 800 MHz-1.2 GHz, in agreement with the device requirements. The designed brick antenna is assessed in terms of power penetration, reflection, and transmission coefficients. To show the performance of the antenna in the relevant application scenario, an experiment has been carried out on an anthropomorphic head phantom, measuring the differential signals between healthy state and hemorrhagic stroke mimicking condition for different antennas positions.