Breast Tumor Monitoring Vest with Embedded Flexible UWB Antennas - the Proof-of-Concept Evaluations with Realistic Phantoms

This paper presents a proof-of-concept for a breast tumor monitoring vest designed to operate in the ISM 2.5 GHz and ultrawideband (UWB) frequency range (3.1-10.6 GHz). The vest incorporates three different types of antennas, enabling a comparative evaluation of their performance. To assess the effectiveness of the vests, realistic breast tissue and tumor phantoms are utilized, accommodating various breast sizes and densities. Tumor detection relies on a microwave technique, with the presence of tumors observed through measured channel transfer parameters
$(\mathrm{S}21\mathrm{s})$
. The study reveals promising results, indicating that even the small breast abnormalities (1 cm in size) can be detected using the vests across different breast densities. The observed differences in S21 values range from 0.5-20dB demonstrating a significant level of detectability.