Improved DORT for breast cancer detection in low contrast scenarios

Microwave imaging performance deteriorates with increasing clutter and heterogeneity in the imaging medium. Breast cancer detection becomes increasingly challenging with increasing breast density. Decomposition of the time reversal operator (DORT) uses signal subspace of the multistatic matrix which is perturbed in highly heterogeneous medium. To overcome the problem we propose coherent processing in frequency domain prior to imaging operation. Coherent DORT (C-DORT) provides robust imaging performance compared to conventional non-coherent DORT in cluttered medium as evident from the imaging results obtain using anatomically realistic numerical breast phantoms.