Microwave focusing algorithms for breast cancer detection: A comparison for a 2D simplified scenario

Limitations of conventional X-ray mammography have stimulated recent interest into active microwave based diagnostic approaches that take advantage of a sharper dielectric contrast between benign and malignant breast tissues exhibited in the UHF range of frequency. This interest comes from a superior sensitivity of RF-based techniques, which can have a huge social and cost impact. Therefore, many microwave imaging techniques, aiming at detecting, localizing and identifying cancers in breast tissues, are being developed and investigated. The purpose of this contribution is to analyze and compare such focusing schemes in terms of the detection capability and the achievable resolution in the reconstructions. More precisely, as the common mathematical framework is the inversion of a linear integral scattering operator, the singular system of such an operator is used to trace relationship between and compare different methods.