Internal Electric Field Reconstruction and SAR Estimation of In-Body Antenna Using Inverse Equivalent Current Method

In this article, we reconstruct the internal electric field due to a dipole antenna embedded in a dielectric phantom for developing a noninvasive specific absorption rate (SAR) measurement system. The reconstruction method is based on the surface equivalent theorem and boundary conditions, which relate the external field radiated from the embedded antenna to equivalent electromagnetic surface currents on the human body. The electric field data sampled at spatial points on a surface enclosing the phantom are used in the inverse calculation. All field integrals are discretized and numerically solved to obtain the electromagnetic currents on the phantom's surface. The internal electric field distribution and SAR value in a phantom can be calculated from the reconstructed surface currents if the electric properties of the phantom are known. The validity of the method was demonstrated numerically and experimentally using a dipole antenna embedded in the lossy rectangular phantom, which has a dielectric constant close to human skin tissue at 2.5 GHz. Comparison with forward numerical simulations has shown that the surface current and electric field distribution can be predicted with great precision. Carefully performing the experiments using a self-made phantom validated our numerical demonstration and provided satisfactory reconstruction results.