A New Metasurface-Enhanced Microstrip Patch Antenna for Haemorrhagic Stroke Detection

This paper presents a new printed square monopole antenna (PSMA) for haemorrhagic stroke detection, enhanced by a metasurface (MTS) superstrate. To show the capabilities of MTS technology in microwave brain imaging, three different tomographic systems are compared in CST Microwave Studio. Our previous developed headband scanner operating in a lossy matching medium is compared to two brain scanners operating in air: a 8-PSMA system and a 8-MTS-enhanced PSMA system. For image reconstruction we used the distorted Born iterative method (DBIM) combined with two-step iterative shrinkage/thresholding (TwIST) algorithm. Our results indicate that a blood-mimicking target placed inside the brain volume of our head model can be detected avoiding the use of a liquid and bulky matching medium. In addition, our MTS superstrate enhances the antennas' reflection coefficient and increases the signal difference due to the presence of the target, which translates into more accurate reconstructions. Thus, MTS technology may be a significant hardware advancement towards the development of functional and ergonomic MWI scanners for haemorrhage detection.