(c) 20152016 Rom. Rep. Phys.

(for accepted papers only)

ROMANIAN REPORTS IN PHYSICS

ANAMARIA SPATARU1
1

University of Bucharest,Faculty of Physics

Atomistilor 407, RO-077125, POB-MG6, Magurele-Bucharest, Romania, EU
Email:{spataruana09@yahoo.com
Compiled December 22, 2015

Key words: Physics literature and publications, editorials, publications in electronic media.

1. MEDICAL APPLICATION OF MICROWAVE IMAGING

1. About Microwave imaging

2. Principles
3. Applications
1.1. ABOUT MICROWAVE IMAGING

Current clinical tomographic imaging methods, including the three most widely
used onescomputed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), each offer useful information on various tissue properties related, for example, to tissue blood perfusion, ischaemia and infarction, hypoxia, metabolism and malignancies. Each of these methods has its own advantages
and disadvantages. For example, CT presents excellent spatial resolution, while is
less informative in soft-tissue functional imaging than PET. On the other hand, PET
cannot compete with CT in terms of spatial resolution. Recent trends in fused multimodality imaging have raised concerns about the costs of the systems and the dosage
of radiation. There is a need for novel competitive imaging modalities. Microwave
tomography (MWT) might present a safe, mobile and cost-effective supplement to
current imaging modalities for non-invasive assessment of acute and chronic functional and pathological conditions of soft tissues. MWT was underdeveloped for a
number of technical reasons, including the high costs of unique hardware components and an insufficient computing power. In recent years, tremendous progress in
both telecommunication (mobile) technologies and computing has opened up unique
opportunities for further research and development of MWT towards biomedical and
Rom. Rep. Phys.

Romanian Academy Publishing House

ISSN: 1221-1451

Anamaria Spataru

(c) 20152016 RRP

clinical applications. Within the microwave spectrum, biological tissues are differentiated and consequently can be imaged based on their dielectric properties. It is
known that the dielectric properties of tissues with high (muscle) and low (fat and
bone) water content are significantly different. During recent decades, the changes in
the dielectric properties of tissues caused by various physiological and pathological
alterations have been intensively studied. These changes are summarized and discussed below. Safety is an important feature of MWT imaging. Within this modality,
a non- ionizing electromagnetic (EM) field is used in contrast to the ionizing radiation used in CT imaging and nuclear medicine. We estimate that the level of the
microwave field used in imaging procedures will be comparable to the level of the
microwave field used in cell phones at the same GHz portion of the EM spectrum
Microwave imaging is a science which has been evolved from older detecting/locating techniques (e.g., radar) in order to evaluate hidden or embedded objects
in a structure (or media)using electromagnetic (EM) waves in microwave regime
(i.e., 300 MHz-300 GHz). Microwave imaging techniques can be classified as either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative imaging techniques (are also known as
inverse scattering methods) give the electrical (i.e., electrical and magnetic property
distribution) and geometrical parameters (i.e., shape, size and location) of an imaged
object by solving a nonlinear inverse problem. The nonlinear inverse problem is converted into a linear inverse problem (i.e., Ax=b where A and b are known and x (or
image) is unknown) by using Born or distorted Born approximations. Despite the
fact that direct matrix inversion methods can be invoked to solve the inversion problem, this will be so costly when the size of the problem is so big (i.e., when A is a
very dense and big matrix). To overcome this problem, direct inversion is replaced
with iterative solvers. Techniques in this class are called forward iterative methods which are usually time consuming. On the other hand, qualitative microwave
imaging methods calculate a qualitative profile (which is called as reflectivity function or qualitative image) to represent the hidden object. These techniques use approximations to simplify the imaging problem and then they use back-propagation
(also called time reversal, phase compensation, or back-migration) to reconstruct the
unknown image profile. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), ground-penetrating radar
(GPR), and frequency-wave number migration algorithm are some of the most popular qualitative microwave imaging methods.
1.2. PRINCIPLES

In general, a microwave imaging system has two parts, namely: hardware and
software (or post-processing). The hardware part is responsible to collect data from
the sample under test. A transmitter antenna sends EM waves toward sample under test (e.g., human body for medical imaging). If the sample is made of only
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Romanian Reports in Physics

homogeneous material which extends to infinity, theoretically no EM wave will be

reflected. Introduction of any anomaly which has a different properties (i.e., electrical/magnetic)in comparison with the surrendering homogeneous medium may reflect a portion of EM wave. The bigger the difference between the properties of the
anomaly and the surrounding medium is, the stronger the reflected wave will be. This
reflection will be collected and measured by the same antenna (in monostatic case)
or a different receiver antenna (in bistatic case)
To increase cross-range resolution of the imaging system, several antennas
should be distributed over an area (which is called sampling area) with a spacing
less than the operating wavelength. However, by having several antennas placed
close to each other, the mutual coupling between antennas may degrade the accuracy
of the collected signals. Moreover, transmitter and receiver system will become very
complex. To address these problems, one single scanning antenna is used instead
of several antennas. Later, when the antenna finishes scanning the entire sampling
area, one can put together collected data all over the sampling area and process them
together, simultaneously. In fact, a synthetic (virtual) aperture is produced by moving the antenna (similar to synthetic aperture radar principle). Later, the collected
data which is sometimes referred as raw data is fed into the software part to get processed. Based on applied processing algorithm, microwave imaging techniques can
be categorized as quantitative and qualitative.
1.3. APPLICATIONS
REFERENCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwavei maging

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submitted to Romanian Reports in Physics

ISSN: 1221-1451