Detection of Breast Tumor with Lens Loaded Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna utilizing a Frequency Domain Approach

This work presents a study where a Lens Loaded Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna (LL-AVA) operating in the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) region is employed as a transducer for microwave imaging of a cancerous breast using frequency domain approach. The experiments were conducted in a simulation and real-life scenario with the breast phantom being scanned by an in-house built imaging facility. An UWB signal is transmitted from the transmitting antenna and the received signals are collected by the same device. The signals are collected from the Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) in frequency domain at a later stage. The received signals are then passed to the frequency domain image reconstruction method designed to image backscattered signal energy as a function of position. Initially the breast phantom is scanned in the simulator to get a rudimentary information regarding the target. Later, the effectiveness of the proposed image reconstruction method is demonstrated by carefully imaging the tumor in a breast phantom developed in-house. The proposed approach clearly detects the embedded tumor inside the fat layer of the breast phantom as explained subsequently in this work.