Towards a planar Microwave Tomography system for early stage breast cancer detection

In this paper, the advantages of planar Microwave Tomography (MT) applied to early stage breast cancer detection are presented. In the proposed planar configuration, the breast is compressed between two dielectric plates in a configuration similar to that of X-ray mammography. This approach would allow the future implementation of a dual modality imaging system where the advantages of both techniques can be exploited. The research efforts made both at DRÉ/L2S (Supelec) and Poly-grames (École Polytechnique de Montréal), for the development of a planar MT system are described, as well as, the key features of the latter. A numerical validation is used to show how the breast compression can lead to an enhancement of the reconstructed images.