A Circular Ring Patch Antenna for Breast Cancer Detection Based on Return Loss and Voltage Standing Wave Ratio

Abstract

The increasing number of breast cancer cases is a significant threat to women's health, emphasizing the importance of timely detection for successful treatment. Various medical imaging techniques, including magnetic resonance imaging, mammography, digital mammography, and computer-aided detection, are available for breast cancer detection. Among these methods, microwave imaging (MI) stands out due to its simplicity, effectiveness, and non-invasiveness. In this paper, a compact circular ring patch antenna with a partial ground plane is designed for detecting breast tumors using MI technique. The antenna operates at 5.2 GHz within the ultra-wideband frequency range of 3.1 – 10.6 GHz. It is made from Rogers RT/duroid 5880 material, with a dielectric constant of 2.2, a tangent loss of 0.02, and a thickness of 0.8 mm, featuring overall dimensions of 30 × 20 × 0.8 mm³. High-Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software is utilized to simulate the antenna, and breast phantoms with and without tumors. The simulation results reveal a return loss and VSWR value of –32.08 dB, – 40.30 dB, 1.0539, and 1.0198 without and with tumors, respectively. These findings demonstrate that the proposed antenna can accurately detect the presence of a tumor through variations in return loss and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), making it capable of detecting very small tumors (4 mm) due to its compact size and excellent impedance-matching characteristics. Overall, the study suggests that this compact antenna design shows promise in improving early detection of breast cancer, offering a simple yet effective solution in the field of microwave imaging.