Magneto-Thermal Modeling of Biological Tissues: A Step Toward Breast Cancer Detection

In this paper, a new breast cancer detection method is presented that combines thermography and high-frequency excitation techniques. The proposed method uses distribution and variation of the temperature on the breast surface to estimate the location and size of a malignant tissue (a cancerous tumor). The idea of this paper stems from the analysis of the radio frequency (RF) radiation effects on the human body. In this paper, a description of RF effects on the human body and simulation results are provided. To validate the proposed method, a multilayer 3-D breast model is simulated. First, breast tissue is excited with different types of RF antennas, which is followed with an electromagnetic analysis. Next, the heat transfer equation is applied for thermal analysis to estimate the distribution of surface temperature. Simulation results show that both the temperature and the specific absorption rate increase as the tumor becomes bigger or closer to the surface. Finally, thermal responses of multiple tumors are employed to estimate breast cancer existence.