Development of an Imaging System for Breast Cancer Detection

This paper presents the design and development of a microwave imaging system for breast cancer detection. A microstrip patch antenna is designed and fabricated for breast cancer imaging. The measurement result of the fabricated patch antenna shows that the operating frequency band of the antenna is from 1.85 GHz to 4.5 GHz and the antenna gain is 3.1 dB throughout the operating band of frequency. Dough and soybean oil-based phantom has been used to mimic the breast phantom tissue. The Dielectric properties of dough and soybean oil have been measured using the coaxial probe method from 1 GHz to 10 GHz. The measured value of the dielectric properties shows the Relative permittivity of dough varies from 31.8-20.8 and conductivity vary from 0.352-6.52 (S/m) and relative permittivity of soybean oil vary from 2.75-2.53 and conductivity vary from 0.004-0.024 (S/m) from frequency range of 1 to 10 GHz. A microwave imaging setup is established to detect the presence of the tumor. We have focused to identify the presence of tumor in breast phantom with the soybean oil and dough-based phantom.it is found that the antenna has capability to detect the presence of tumor inside the breast phantom.