Sensititvity analysis of UWB minimum variance beamformer for medical imaging

Ultra Wideband technique is a promissing approach for medical imaging applications. Radar approaches are specially efficient as long as a contrast exists between the target and the surrounding medium. However, in the imaging procedure there are several uncertaintities that might hinder the exactness and reliability of the results. Two of the most challenging uncertaintities are the noise of the measurement and the propagation speed estimation error; the latter being more of an issue when performing Ultra Wideband measurements. In this paper, the sensitivity of Ultra Wideband minimum variance beamformer when it comes to speed estimation tolerances has been experimentally studied. The measuement object is equivalent to an average-adipose breast model treated under realistic situations.