Modeling of Tumor Location Effect in Breast Microwave Imaging using COMSOL

E. Khosrowshahli[1], and A. Jeremic[2]
[1]School of Biomedical Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
[2]McMaster University, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University,
Hamilton, ON, Canada
Publié en 2011

Microwave imaging has been recently proposed as a potentially useful screening technique for breast cancer. This method detects abnormalities in the tissue based on permittivity difference between breast normal and malignant tissue. In this method breast is illuminated by high frequency electromagnetic wave, and received waves are then analyzed in order to construct a map of breast\'s permittivity.

As a preliminary approach we modeled a breast as a sphere with ten antennas around it. Analysis was done in three cases: no tumor, centric location and eccentric location. In all cases, average power on the surface of all receiving antennas is calculated using COMSOL. Results show that output power is considerably different in the three cases, and later analysis can extract permittivity maps, which help in the diagnosis of the tumor and its size and location.