Breast Cancer Detection Feasibility with UWB Flexible Antennas on Wearable Monitoring Vest

Abstract

This paper presents a study on a monitoring vest embedded with multiple flexible ultrawideband (UWB) antenna elements used for detection of possible breast cancer tissue. The cancer detection is based on identifying differences in the UWB radio channel characteristics between several on-body antennas located around the breast. The antennas are small-sized, made of flexible material, operating at whole UWB band as well as in the ISM 2.4 GHz band, thus can be used in portable telemedicine applications. Additionally, the paper presents realistic simulation results on the impact of the cancer tissue on the signal propagation and channel characteristics at different frequency ranges using an anatomical voxel model. The simulations are carried out using electromagnetic simulation software CST Studio Suite, including power flow analysis and radio channel evaluations. The results show that, such as, tumor of size 1 cm causes a clear difference in a signal propagation through a breast tissue, which can be seen in a power flow variation in the vicinity of the cancerous area. This can be also seen both in frequency and time domain channel characteristics between different on-body antennas. The promising results show that flexible UWB antenna vest could be developed for selfmonitoring of breast health and initial detection of breast cancers.

Remote diagnostics and monitoring using microwave technique – improving healthcare in rural areas and in exceptional situations

“…Table I presents the dielectric properties (relative permittivity) of human tissues, tumors, and blood clots at different frequencies. The dielectric properties of different human tissues have been obtained from [35] and the dielectric properties of abnormalities from [25,[30][31][32]. It should be noted that in the literature, one can find different values e.g., for brain tumors.…”

“…Table I. Dielectric properties of selected tissue types at different frequencies [25,30,31,32,35]. Stroke is a fatal physical condition, which may cause severe disability or even death, and thus it is essential to be diagnosed in its early phase.…”

“…Furthermore, mammography detects only 78% [41] of the cancer cases and thus, requires often additional Recently, there has arisen interest on developing self-monitoring devices for breast cancer detection [27]. For instance a self-monitoring vest [30,45] could reach better also those women who usually refuse from participation on invited regular screening, for instance, due to the distance and fear of the pain in mammography. Besides, selfmonitoring vest would enable women to check their breast health more often than every second year in regular checks which facilitates the timely detection of rapidly spreading and growing aggressive cancers.…”

“…Besides, selfmonitoring vest would enable women to check their breast health more often than every second year in regular checks which facilitates the timely detection of rapidly spreading and growing aggressive cancers. The recent studies show that even tumors of size 1 cm can be detected deep inside the tissues [30] using microwaves. Detection accuracy could be further improved by increasing number of antennas or frequency.…”

“…These applications have further been suggested to be applied for monitoring drivers [20] and elderlies [21]. As a new approach, microwave technologies are studied for use in pre-diagnostics of several diseases and acute disorders, such as, detection of stroke [22][23][24], brain tumors [25][26][27], breast cancer [28][29][30], blood clots [31,32].…”