Acceleration of electromagnetic solver for microwave tomography

This paper describes some methods of acceleration of the fast electromagnetic solver for the microwave imaging algorithm. This program is a part of a microwave tomography system, developed as a preclinical prototype for the early cancer detection, and operating in 3 - 6 GHz frequency band. The peculiarity of our algorithm is that it simulates all nearby objects of the breast under test, including probe antenna array, bath liquid-air interface, covering metal screen sheet and human body, but it exploits simplified models for all of them. Such models are based on supporting data of the electromagnetic field distribution, calculated using CST solver.

I. Introduction

Microwave tomography (MT) is relatively new method, developing for imaging of inner structure of human organs [1]. One of the perspective area of its application is early tumor detection, which is potentially effective, owing to a significant contrast in the dielectric properties of normal and malignant breast tissues at microwave frequencies [2]–[4]. Unlike the approximated radar imaging technic, MT produces solution of inverse electromagnetic (EM) problem for the image reconstruction of complex permittivity of the breast tissue [1]–[4]. The potential advantage of such a rigorous approach is limited by very long time of the reconstruction that is a consequence of the completeness of the inverse EM problem. This fact is one of a major difficulty of the microwave tomography.