Evaluation of a hemi‐spherical wideband antenna array for breast cancer imaging

Abstract

Using similar techniques to ground penetrating radars, microwave detection of breast tumors is a potential nonionizing and noninvasive alternative to traditional body‐imaging techniques. In order to develop an imaging system, the team at Bristol have been working on a number of antenna array prototypes, based around a stacked‐patch element, starting with simple pairs of elements and progressing to fully populated planar arrays. As the system commences human subject trials, a curved breast phantom has been developed along with an approximately hemi‐spherical conformal array. This contribution will present details of the conformal array design and initial results from this unique experimental imaging system as applied to an anatomically shaped breast phantom.