Investigations into an uwb microwave radar system for breast cancer detection

Recent years have shown a considerable interest in using a wideband microwave radar technique for detecting and locating breast cancer. The basis for microwaves to detect and locate tumour is the difference in the electrical properties of normal and malignant breast tissue. Normal breast tissue is largely transparent to microwaves while lesions, which contain more water and blood, scatter them back towards the probing antenna. The scattered signal can be recorded by radar and analysed using a computer. This technique is considered as a viable alternative to X-ray mammography, which is currently considered as the "gold standard" for breast cancer diagnosis. The reason is that it involves the propagation of very low levels (1000 times less than a mobile phone) of microwave energy through the breast tissue and is thus is non-ionizing. Also it is of low cost and thus has potential to be used by masses. The microwave radar approach requires generating and receiving short pulses for various locations of a probe antenna or alternatively by an array antenna. As a result, it requires the use of an ultra wideband (UWB) source and receiver forming microwave radar. In this paper we look at the capability of a UWB microwave radar technique to detect breast cancer by performing a number of experiments with a simple breast phantom. In particular, we investigate the effect of compensating the received signal drop due to the distance between a target and a receiving antenna to enhance the target detection by visual inspection of a generated image.