Time-efficient contrast-enhanced thermoacoustic imaging modality for 3-D breast cancer detection using compressive sensing

Microwave-induced thermoacoustic imaging (TAI) has been actively researched in the past decade and shown to be a promising non-ionizing technology for breast cancer detection [1, 2]. TAI develops an image indicative of the internal structures of a biological sample by exploiting emanated acoustic waves from absorbed microwave energy in the sample due to the thermoacoustic effect [3]. As a hybrid modality, TAI integrates several attractive merits, including large contrast, high spatial resolution and low cost of implementation.