A Low Cost and Efficient Breast Cancer Detection Method With a Staircase Shaped Ultrawide Band Dielectric Resonator Antenna Using Monostatic Radar Based Microwave Imaging Technique

Abstract

In this article, a staircase shaped ultra-wide band dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) has been used as a sensor for detection of breast tumor by monostatic radar based microwave imaging (MRMWI).The proposed DRA has fractional bandwidth (BW) 98.5% and high peak gain 5.98dB along with dual polarization behavior from 5.12-8.2GHz and 11.02-13.8GHz. In MRMWI setup, DRA is placed over the breast phantom at a distance of 7mm and provides the safe exposure of radiation (<1.6W/Kg). For simulation, it rotates around the phantom at a fixed interval in elevation (0-180◦) and azimuthal (0-360◦) planes. It works as a radiate and receive the reflected signals towards and from the scanned area simultaneously. To validate the results, fabricated DRA is connected to vector network analyzer and rotates (as done for simulation) around the artificial breast phantom. That is a replica of human breast made from gelatin+sugar, Vaseline and wheat flour+water equivalent to skin, fat and tumor respectively. Afterward S11responses are recorded in the presence and absence of tumor inside the phantom. A significant variation in recorded values leads to the detection of tumor that processed further in beam-forming algorithms; delay and sum (DAS) and delay-multiply and sum (DMAS) to reform 2-dimensional image of tumor in MATLAB.