Full-wave assessment of feasibility guidelines for 3-d microwave imaging of brain strokes

Microwave imaging (MWI) can provide truly non-invasive and affordable tools to perform biomedical monitoring for diagnostic purposes, as it exploits non-ionizing - therefore harmless - radiations and relatively cheap and portable devices. In this respect, besides breast cancer imaging, which is still the mostly addressed topic by researchers worldwide, there are several emerging applications relevant to the so-called aging society scenario, such as early diagnosis of bones degradation [P. M. Meaney, T. Zhou, D. Goodwin, A. Golnabi, E. A. Attardo and K. D. Paulsen, “Bone Dielectric Property Variation as a Function of Mineralization at Microwave Frequencies,” Int. Journal of Biom. Imag. 2012] and monitoring of brain injuries due to strokes. In these applications, the capabilities of a microwave technology can be helpful to cooperate with existing diagnostic technologies, in order to improve the overall reliability and timeliness of the diagnosis.