Non-invasive microwave lung water monitoring: Feasibility study

In this paper, a numerical feasibility study is performed for the non-invasive microwave monitoring of lung water by patients with pulmonary edema. The microwave sensor considered here is the balanced antipodal Vivaldi antenna working in the frequency range from 1.5 to 6.5 GHz. A numerical phantom is a MRI-based high-resolution anatomical model of a patient. In the numerical phantom lung water volume has been successively varied form 0 to 900 ml and the phantom has been virtually exposed to an electromagnetic Gaussian pulse. Reflected signals were subsequently used for estimation of the lung water level and the obtained estimated values have shown a relative error of less than 6%.