System and formulation options for biomedical microwave imaging

The various options in the design of microwave imaging systems for biomedical applications, as well as the associated options in the mathematical formulation of the corresponding inverse scattering problem, are delineated and discussed. These options impact the imaging performance of the overall system because they affect 1) the amount of scattered field information obtained, 2) the signal-to-noise ratio of the measurements, 3) the modelling error incurred in the inverse scattering problem, and 4) the nonlinearity and ill-posedness of the inverse problem. Here we describe how some of these options can be used to design and enhance the imaging performance of microwave imaging systems.