Study of effect of numerical breast phantom heterogeneity on dielectric profile reconstruction using microwave imaging

Human breast is a heterogeneous medium for microwave signal. Breast cancer detection using microwave imaging is done based on signal scattered by breast tissues at different frequencies. Wave propagation direction is extremely important in heterogeneous medium like human breast. In this paper, the effect of wave propagation direction on the dielectric profile reconstruction is simulated in the presence of noise. X and Y directed transverse electric (TE) waves are considered for numerical breast phantom heterogeneity exploitation. Wave propagating in Y direction results into better dielectric profile reconstruction than X directed wave. Signal to noise ratio is very crucial for microwave imaging because information resides in low power scattered electric signal. Results show that SNR of at least 30 dB is required to detect cancer by solving extremely under-determined system of scattering equations. © 2017, Electromagnetics Academy. All rights reserved.