On the effect of breast compression and measurement setup configuration in microwave tomography for breast cancer detection

Abstract

The effect of the measurement setup configuration for Microwave Tomography (MT) is analyzed through several simple examples. Synthetic measurements are generated using a method of moments code and the well-known MR-CSI method is used for the solution of the inverse problem for the 2D TM scalar case. The quality of the reconstructed images is compared for the different configurations analyzed. Two configurations based on breast compression are compared to a classical circular measurement setup. An improvement in the quality of the reconstructed objects is observed when a compression of the object is applied due to the close proximity of the receivers. The Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) of the radiation operator is also obtained for the different configurations and the results obtained from this analysis further support the superior reconstruction capabilities of the presented configurations based on a compression of the object.