Detection of dielectric contrast of breast tissues using confocal microwave technique

Confocal microwave technology is explored as a screening tool to detect regions of dielectric contrast of breast tissues. When exposed to microwaves, malignant breast tissues exhibit electrical properties that are significantly different from that of healthy breast tissues. In vitro studies of normal and cancerous breast tissues are performed using a prototype of confocal microwave imaging. Experimentally obtained time domain results are substantiated by finite difference time domain analysis and good agreement is reported. Distance to the region of dielectric contrast is computed accurately using these results.