Microwave Imaging for Breast Cancer Detection: The Discrimination of Breast Lesion Morphology

Radar based microwave imaging system is proposed and used for breast cancer detection. Tumour location can be detected based on high dielectric differences between tumour and surrounding tissues. In clinical medicine, malignant tumour usually has more irregular morphology than benign tumour. However, previous work has ignored the discrimination between benign and malignant tumours, and this issue is solved in our work. In this paper, two major novel contributions are presented. Firstly, a complex natural responses (CNRs) method is proposed for discrimination between the benign and malignant tumours. The CNRs of the tumour show a unique feature that the CNRs only depend on the morphological appearance of the tumour. Simulation results show that the use of the CNRs can successfully discriminate between a 5 mm radius spherical benign tumour and a 5 mm average radius malignant tumour with a spiculated periphery. Secondly, microwave images of the benign and malignant tumours are created by a proposed mono-static imaging system which uses a single Vivaldi antenna to scan the breast. Both benign and malignant tumour positions can be correctly indicated from the images.