The application of a novel clutter removal algorithm to SAR beamforming in breast microwave imaging

In this article, a new approach for microwave imaging (MI) for early diagnosis of breast cancer is presented. The main idea behind this proposed approach is to generate high quality image of tumor in breast without using the data of healthy breast tissue (no tumor). Monostatic antenna system is utilized to image various sizes of tumors inside the breast tissue. The approach employed uses synthetic aperture radar (SAR) beamforming algorithm along with a clutter removal step for microwave imaging of the tumors. The algorithm generates the tumors' location inside the breast tissue with lesser number of scanning points, thus, saving the computation time. A metamaterial antenna is considered for the above approach having a peak gain of 6 dB. The proposed approach is time-efficient, simple and effective method for the detection of breast tumors (2 mm,4mm and 8 mm) and also the multiple tumors without any need of calibration or subtraction method (no requirement of healthy tissue data), less no of antennas and minimum scanning points.