Functional Imaging of Compressed Breast by Microwave Radiometry

A tumor is visible by a passive microwave radiometer scanning the breast surface if it changes the radiometer output of a healthy breast to an extent that overcomes the radiometric resolution for the given sensing antenna and integration time. In this paper the breast is intentionally squeezed between the radiometric antenna and the chest wall and the temperature is evaluated for the deformed breast together with the generated radiometric signal. To be compared with the radiometric resolution, the difference signal between the outputs in the presence of a lesion and in its absence has to be evaluated. To achieve this, a mechanical, thermal and electromagnetic model of the breast has been developed. A finite-element code has been used to solve for the mechanical and thermal problems, while FDTD has been exploited for electromagnetic computations. We show that compressing the breast improves the radiometric visibility depending on tumor depth and deformation.