Numerical Study of Microwave Scattering in Breast Tissue via Coupled Dielectric and Elastic Contrasts

Author

Zhao, Min ; Shea, Jacob D. ; Hagness, Susan C. ; Van der Weide, Daniel W. ; Van Veen, Barry D. ; Varghese, Tomy

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

Volume

7

fYear

2008

fDate

6/30/1905 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

247

Lastpage

250

Abstract

A computational investigation of microwave scattering in mechanically (or acoustically) excited breast tissue is conducted to explore the feasibility of combining dielectric and elastic properties contrasts to enhance breast cancer detection. The mechanical excitation induces tissue-dependent displacements in the heterogeneous breast interior, which modulate the scattered microwave signals. Sheet boundary conditions are implemented using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to efficiently compute the Doppler component of the scattered microwave signals. Simulation results for a 2D numerical phantom testbed demonstrate increased microwave scattering contrast between malignant and normal fibroglandular inclusions when elastic properties are exploited.

Keywords

Doppler effect; biomechanics; cancer; electromagnetic wave scattering; finite difference time-domain analysis; gynaecology; medical signal detection; tumours; Doppler component; breast cancer detection; breast tissue; coupled dielectric contrast; elastic contrast; finite-difference time-domain method; mechanical excitation; microwave scattering; sheet boundary condition; Biomechanics; breast cancer detection; dielectric properties; elastic properties; finite element method (FEM); finite-difference time-domain (FDTD); microwave imaging; scattering;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1536-1225

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LAWP.2008.920752

Filename

4476088