UWB thin film flexible antenna for microwave thermography for breast cancer detection

A novel low-cost flexible antenna for a non-invasive and highly sensitive method to detect malign tumors in the early stages, contributing to diminishing the mortality which appears in the cases where the breast cancer was detected in late incurable stages. Using thin film Kapton substrate the flexible antenna has been built and carried out by the use of CST Microwave Studio software. The proposed structure operate in S-band (with reflection coefficient (S11) below -10dB) and has an ultra-wide band (UWB) characteristic providing an important bandwidth of about 2,4 GHz with a center frequency around 3 GHz. In order to predict the effect of the human body on the S-parameter response of the developed antenna design, an inhomogeneous multi-layer model of the women breast is used. The simulated results indicate that the proposed antenna kept it UWB property. The overall size of the miniaturized antenna is 20mm×22mm which make it very suitable for a radar-based breast cancer detection system.