Tumor Estimation In Tissue Sensing Adaptive Radar (TSAR) Signals

Tissue sensing adaptive radar (TSAR) is a microwave imaging technique that has been proposed as a modality for early stage breast cancer detection. A considerable challenge for the successful implementation of this technique is the reduction of clutter that is present in the scattered fields. In this paper, a method to estimate the tumor response contained in the late time scattered fields is presented. The method uses a parametric function to model the tumor response. A maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) estimation approach is used to evaluate the optimal values for the estimates of the parameters. Accurate identification of the tumor response permits the segregation of the clutter from the late time response. The ability of the algorithm to estimate a tumor response using simulated TSAR data is demonstrated.