Imaging for Early Microwave Breast Cancer Quantitative Diagnosis

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 24; no. 9; pp. 2829 - 2833
• Main Authors: Li, Xiang-Long, Hao, Si-Si, Wang, Hong-Fang, Li, Jian-Ying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2025; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antennas; Breast cancer; Confocal microwave imaging (CMI); Diseases; Energy distribution; Fourier transforms; frequency-domain zero-padding (FDZP); Image reconstruction; Imaging; Medical imaging; Microwave imaging; Microwave theory and techniques; Permittivity; point spread function (PSF); Point spread functions; Scattering; Skin; Spherical waves; structural similarity index metric (SSIM)
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2025.3575063

This letter proposes a near-field confocal microwave imaging (CMI) approach to improve the accuracy of breast cancer identification. An iterative process integrates the results of the time-delay and point spread function methods as mutual prior information, which enables precise phase and amplitude compensation in the spherical wave model. Frequency-domain zero-padding and inverse discrete Fourier transform methods are applied to optimize imaging accuracy while maintaining efficiency. The proposed method is validated in a breast cancer detection scenario, where the structural similarity index metric is employed to evaluate reconstructed energy distribution. Results indicate a 52.59% improvement in distribution accuracy compared to traditional CMI.