Steps to microwave probing of complex dielectric bodies

Microwave probing of dielectric materials is a challenging application of microwaves. This study investigates a finite difference time domain electromagnetic wave simulation tool with the intent of establishing a quantitative simulation environment for microwave probing techniques. Measurements were compared to simulations on distilled water and a phantom resembling a human breast with and without a 10 mm diameter tumor. The measurements showed high signal differences on tumor insertion as well as on variation of the tumor position within the phantom. The simulation results shows agreement on quantitative levels for the whole phantom object, however the simulation results on tumor variation could not be quantitatively correlated to measurements.