Compact Super-Wideband Antenna for Medical Imaging Applications

This paper presents a compact super-wideband (SWB) monopole patch antenna with an elliptical ground plane for microwave imaging with a focus on medical applications for non-invasive detection of cancerous tissues. The proposed antenna exhibits a 10 dB bandwidth over the frequency range of 2.45–25 GHz with a peak gain of 12 dBi and a stable omnidirectional radiation pattern. The proposed antenna is applied to a microwave imaging system to detect lung cancer using a signal frequency of 3.6 GHz. The lung tissue is represented as a simulated phantom with five layers. Malignant tumors of 5–15 mm radius are also simulated within the lung phantom. The S-parameter results show good potential of the proposed antenna for lung cancer detection, as cancerous tissues are shown to cause differentiable reflection and transmission performances.