IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation

Microwave Imaging for Brain Stroke Detection Using Born

Iterative Method

Journal: IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation

Manuscript ID: MAP-2013-0054

Manuscript Type: Research Paper

Date Submitted by the Author: 30-Jan-2013

Complete List of Authors: Ireland, David; University of Queensland, School of ITEE

Bialkowski, Konstanty; University of Queensland, School of ITEE
Abbosh, Amin; University of Queensland, School of ITEE

MICROWAVE IMAGING, ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD THEORY, MEDICAL

Keyword:
IMAGE PROCESSING

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Microwave Imaging for Brain Stroke Detection

Using Born Iterative Method
D. Ireland1 , K. Bialkowski1 , and A. Abbosh1
1
School of ITEE
University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia
David.Ireland@uq.edu.au

Abstract

Microwave imaging reconstruction is applied to an anatomical realistic,

numerical head phantom using the Born iterative method for the detection
of a hemorrhagic stroke within the brain tissues. A forward model is
used to estimate back-scattered signals which are subsequently used in
the image reconstruction process. Image reconstruction using excitation
signals at 600 MHz, 850 MHz and 1000 MHz are shown to produce the
emulated stroke with a high contrast in the estimated conductivity profile.

1 Introduction
Microwave imaging (MI) of the human head has attracted significant research
interest in recent times. This technology is based upon studies that demon-
strate tissue malignancies, blood supply, hypoxia, acute ischemia, and chronic
infarction significantly change dielectric properties of the affected tissues at mi-
crowave frequency [1, 2]. By exposing head tissues to low-levels of microwave
energy, and capturing the scattered energy by an array of antenna elements,
the estimation of the dielectric profiles of the brain tissues can be approximated
and a diagnosis inferred.
Although there are numerous medical conditions that could be compatible
with the proposed system, the stroke is perhaps of most significance. A stroke

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is a disturbance in the blood supply to the brain caused by either a blocked or

burst blood vessel. Some brain tissues are subsequently denied oxygen and glu-
cose resulting in rapid loss of brain functions and often death. A stroke can be
cast into two major categories, ischemic and hemorrhagic. An acute ischemic
stroke is where blood supply to part of the brain is decreased by thrombosis
(obstruction of a blood vessel by a blood clot forming locally) or embolism (ob-
struction due to an embolus from elsewhere in the body). A hemorrhagic stroke
occurs when a blood vessel bursts within the brain. Blood rapidly accumulates
and compresses the surrounding brain tissue.
Physicians primarily rely on medical imaging systems such as the computed
tomography (CT) scan and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for confirmation
of the diagnosis. They are however, not fast, cost effective or portable, nor are
they accessible at rural medical clinics, or carried by first response paramedical
teams. Furthermore, the increasing use of CT scans has brought to light health
concerns due to the ionizing radiation the technology relies upon.
A microwave imaging system relies on non-ionizing radiation and low-cost
equipment that can be realised with off-the-shelf components. However, imag-
ing the human head using microwave systems is an ambitious task. The head
is composed of high-contrast, multi-layered dielectrics of high loss. Pioneer-
ing research extends back to 1989 when, Lin and Clark, experimentally tested
the detection of cerebral edema (excess accumulation of water in the spaces
of the brain) using a 2.4 GHz signal transmitted through a rudimentary head
phantom [3]. In 2000, this concept was further enhanced using transmitted
ultra-wideband signals to detect a hematoma (bleed) in again a rudimentary
phantom head [4]. In recent times, research undertakings have included the
design suitable antenna elements and arrays [5,9]; simulations using anatomical
realistic phantoms [6]; imaging using ultra-wideband radar techniques [7], and
tomography [2]; and real-time monitoring [8].
A majority of these works have made use of geometric-simple phantoms with
only a limited amount of tissue-mimicking materials, see for example [2, 5, 9].
Therefore they are still doubts to the feasibility of stroke imaging as the afore-
mentioned works on imaging and detection have yet to be applied of a more
realistic phantom. To that end, this work examines the efficacy of using the
Born iterative method for image reconstruction on an anatomical realistic, nu-
merical head phantom with an emulated hemorrhagic stroke. This will allow
for a more accurate modeling of attenuation and reflections encountered in the
head that could of been either over or underestimated in previous works. Using

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a forward model, electromagnetic scattering is recorded and subsequently used

to reconstruct the complex dielectric profile of the head using the Born iterative
method. The proposed simulation system is flexible for simulating a wide va-
riety of stroke sizes and locations and would allow testing of a variety of other
competing imaging algorithms.

2 Anatomical Realistic Head Phantom

The basis of this work involves the use of a realistic head phantom. This phan-
tom is obtainable from [10] which originated from a detailed MRI scan. The
phantom consists of 256 × 256 × 128 cubical elements with dimensions of 1.1 mm
×1.1 mm ×1.4 mm. As this paper only considers a two-dimensional simulation,
a transverse slice of the phantom at approximately 30mm from the crown of
the head is extracted from the three-dimensional phantom. The creators of
the phantom model have also made available a data-set to indicate what tissue
each cells belongs too. An illustration of this slice along with seven tissues is
shown in Figure 1. The tissues are skin, skull, skeletal muscle, fat, blood, dura,
cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), gray and white matter. The dielectric properties of
these tissues are given in [11] as a function of frequency. As shown in Figure 1,
an elliptical shaped, hemorrhagic stroke (blood) of radii 5.5 cm and 1.6 cm is
inserted into the head phantom at x = 0 cm, y = 4 cm. The size of the stroke
is chosen to represent strokes seen in MRI and CT scans.

3 Image Reconstruction Procedure

3.1 Forward Model
In lieu of measured field data, a forward model is used to emulate measured
scattered data. The forward model is an integral-based 2-D, method of moments
solver and for brevity is not described here; however, the reader is referred
to [12] for more information. We assume the head phantom is infinitely long,
non-magnetic, and embedded in a lossy homogeneous surrounding medium with
relative dielectric constant and conductivity of s = 40 and σs = 0 respectively.
The head phantom is parallel to the z-axis where the dielectric properties do
not vary. It is illuminated at a single frequency by a TM field where E = E ẑ.
An elliptical array of 36 sensor points which correspond to either transmitter or
receiver is used. Although it’s generally accepted that increasing the size of the

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Figure 1: Illustration of the phantom head slice.

array will increase image quality, it will also increase the memory consumption
of the imaging algorithm. As such, an array size of 36 is believed to provide an
adequate compromise between image quality and memory consumption.
The scattered electric-field is obtained by successively rotating the illumi-
nating source to each sensor point with the remaining points functioning as
receivers. As such, with the transmitted placed at a particular sensor point,
there will be a corresponding set of 36 complex measurements of the electric-
field, referred to as views.

3.2 Born Iterative Method

Figure 2 provides a numerical reconstruction of what would be the MI system
(although it has been emulated here). An investigation domain, Ω, consisting
of an elliptical array of M radiation sources and embedded in a homogeneous
dielectric medium. The investigation domain is segmented into N square cells
with an assumed constant dielectric constant and conductivity in each cell. It
is first convenient to define the normalized dielectric profile to the surrounding
medium as:

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Figure 2: Illustration of the microwave imaging setup.

 
σ(x, y)
˜r (x, y) = r (x, y) + /˜
s (1)
jω

where ˜s is the complex dielectric constant and conductivity of the surrounding
material defined as ˜s = s +jσs /ω. MI seeks to resolve ˜r (x, y). Two competing
methods are the Born iterative method (BIM) and the distorted Born iterative
method (DBIM) [13]. Both methods rely on the inverse solution of an integral-
based system, however, in the BIM, the kernel of the integral remains constant,
while in the DBIM, the kernel is updated at each iteration using a numerical
technique. This adds to the computational complexity of the algorithm. In this
work, we make use of the BIM as it is relatively simple to implement compared
to the DBIM, robust to noise [13] and, shown effective in imaging for breast
tissue [14].
The BIM begins with an initial guess to the dielectric profile of the inves-
tigation domain Ω, for instance ˜r (r) = 1; r ∈ Ω. Assuming the total electric
field is the summation of the incident and scattered field i.e Etot = Einc + Escat ,
the total electric field inside in the domain for a particular view v is solved
using [13]:

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−jks2
Z Z
k−1
 k−1 0 0 
Einc (x, y) = Etot,v (x, y) + ˜r (x , y ) − 1
4
(2)
· k−1
Etot,v (x0 , y 0 )H0 (ks ρ)dx0 dy 0 (2)
p
where ρ = (x0 − x)2 + (y 0 − y)2 and v = 1, 2, . . . , M and k is the iteration
index and:

r
jωµ0 σs
ks = ω 2 µ0 0 s − (3)
0

where 0 and µ0 are the freespace permittivity and permeability respectively.

k−1
The derived total field, Etot,v (x, y) for view v is then substituted into:

−jks2
Z Z
 k 0 0 
Êscat,v (x, y) = ˜r (x , y ) − 1
4
(2)
· k−1
Etot,v (x0 , y 0 )H0 (ks ρ)dx0 dy 0 (4)

where Êscat,v denotes the measured electric field points derived from the forward
problem for view v. In order to avoid issues caused by non-uniqueness of the
problem, the approximated scattered field data are combined at each view and
used to make a new estimate to the dielectric profile of the computational do-
main by solving a linear inverse problem. Segmenting the investigation domain
into square cells and enforcing equations (2) and (4) at the centre of each cell,
a matrix system is derived as:

    
B1k ˜k+1 (x1 , y1 ) − 1 Ψ1
 .  ..   . 
 .    . 
 .  .   . 
    
 B k   ˜k+1 (xn , yn ) − 1  =  Ψv  (5)
 v    
 .  ..   . 
 ..   . .
  . 
  
 
BVk ˜k+1 (xN , yN ) − 1 ΨV

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 
b11 b12 ... b1N
 b21 b22 ... b2N
 
Bvk = 

 .. .. 
 (6)
 . ... ... . 
bM 1 bM 2 ... bM N

with:

−jks2
Z Z
bmn = k−1
Etot,v (x0m , ym
0
)
4 Ωn
(2)
· H0 (ks ρ)dx0 dy 0 (7)
p
where ρ = (x0m − xn )2 + (ym
0 − y )2 , M is the number of sensor points, N is
n
the number of cells. The surface integrals in equation (7) can be evaluated by a
numerical integration procedure such as the trapezoidal or Simpson’s rule. The
measured, scattered electric field data-set at a particular view reads as:

 
Êscat,v (x1 , y1 )
 .. 
.
 
 
 
Ψv =  Êscat,v (xm , ym ) 

 (8)
 .. 

 . 

Êscat,v (xM , yM )

A preliminary matrix system can now be assembled giving:

h ih i h i
B̄ k T k+1 = Ψ̄ (9)

where B̄ and Ψ̄ contains the complete set of sub-matrices of equation (5) respec-
tively. T k+1 is the vector containing the estimated dielectric profile at iteration
k + 1,
The matrix system of equation (8) is ill-posed and therefore a regularization
scheme must be applied to minimize spurious solutions. In this work we choose
the Tikhonov’s regularization scheme which has the form [16]:

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" # " #
B̄ k h k+1 i Ψ̄
T = (10)
λI 0

where I is the identity matrix of size N × M , λ is a scalar regularization factor

and 0 a null vector of length M . The estimated dielectric profile is determined
by minimising the least squares:

" # " # 2
B̄ k h i Ψ̄
T k+1 = argmin T̄ k+1 − (11)


T k+1 λI 0

4 Reconstructed Images
Using the aforementioned algorithm the investigation domain is segmented into
square cells of 5 mm × 5 mm. The scattered electric field emulated by the
forward model is corrupted by adding Gaussian white noise. In this work, the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is defined as [15]:

||Ψ̄||2
SNR = 10 log10 (12)
2V M σ 2

where σ is the standard deviation of the additive noise.

In order to decrease the computational time, the sub-matrices of B̄ at iter-
ation k are assembled in parallel. The image is reconstructed on an platform
consisting of a Intel Xeon X5650 2.67 GHz, twelve core processor, with 48 GB
of RAM. Four sub-matrices are assembled in parallel on different cores. The
BIM is iterated for 50 iterations taking on average, approximately 5 minutes
per iteration. The image reconstruction process is performed over a large range
of discrete frequencies at various λ settings. We find the most consistent images
in terms of visualising the stroke is between 500 MHz − 1000 MHz with λ = 0.1
and thus for brevity only these results will be shown here.
Figures 3 to 8 give the reconstructed permittivities and conductivities at
600 MHz, 850 MHz and 1000 MHz respectively for noiseless and corrupted data
with SNRs of 10 dB and 20 dB. The reconstructed relative permittivity is poor
in each case with the stroke only visible at 850 MHz and 1000 MHz. The
reconstructed conductivity however is of much better quality with the stroke
visible at each frequency with either noiseless or corrupted data. It is also

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apparent, the image reconstructions are more sensitive to noise as the frequency
increases. In order to quantify the algorithm we make use of two normalised,
root mean squared errors defined as:

v " # " # 2
u
k h
k

u 1 −2 B̄ k
i Ψ̄
NRMS1 T̄ = Ψ̄ T − (13)
t
M

λI 0

and:

v
u N  2
k

u 1 X  ˜r (xn , yn ) − T k (xn , yn ) 
NRMS2 T̄ = t (14)
N n=1  ˜r (xn , yn ) 

NRMS1 refers to the reconstruction error with respect to the minimisation be-
tween the simulated and measured electric fields. NRMS2 refers to the recon-
struction error with respect to the deviation between the reconstructed and
actual complex dielectric profile. Figure 9 gives NRMS1 as a function of itera-
tion for 600 MHz, 850 MHz and 1000 MHz with a SNR of 10dB. As shown BIM
reaches convergence after approximately 10 iterations with reconstruction at
600MHz giving the lowest NRMS1 error followed by 850 MHz and 1000 MHz.
NRMS1 for other SNR values is not given for brevity, however, they are of
similar form as shown.
Figure 10 gives NRMS2 as a function of iteration for 600MHz, 850MHz and
1000 MHz with a SNR of 10 dB, 20 dB and noiseless data. Figure 10 (a) shows
at 600 MHz, NRMS2 decreases after a few iterations and shows very little change
afterwards. Furthermore, the is no apparent effect on the reconstruction error
by varying the SNR value. Figures 10 (b) and (c) however, show that the re-
construction error is significantly sensitive to the SNR value. When the image
is constructed using noiseless or data with 20 dB SNR, there is an apparent
progression in the minimisation of NRMS2 after approximately the 10th itera-
tion. Image reconstruction with data of 10 dB SNR, shows no clear convergence.
Furthermore, at 850 MHz the reconstructed error is lower with a SNR of 20 dB
compared to when reconstructed with noiseless data. Evidently, whitening the
data has been slightly beneficial in this case.

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(a) Original profile (b) Reconstructed with noiseless data.

(c) Reconstructed with SNR = 20 dB. (d) Reconstructed with SNR = 10 dB

10 20 30 40 50 60

Figure 3: Comparison of the original dielectric constant profile r (x, y) at

600 MHz and the reconstructed profile.

10

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(a) Original profile (b) Reconstructed with noiseless data.

(c) Reconstructed with SNR = 20 dB. (d) Reconstructed with SNR = 10 dB

0 0.5 1 1.5 2

Figure 4: Comparison of the original conductivity σ(x, y) at 600 MHz and the
reconstructed profile.

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(a) Original profile (b) Reconstructed with noiseless data.

(c) Reconstructed with SNR = 20 dB. (d) Reconstructed with SNR = 10 dB

10 20 30 40 50 60

Figure 5: Comparison of the original dielectric constant profile r (x, y) at

850 MHz and the reconstructed profile.

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(a) Original profile (b) Reconstructed with noiseless data.

(c) Reconstructed with SNR = 20 dB. (d) Reconstructed with SNR = 10 dB

0 0.5 1 1.5 2

Figure 6: Comparison of the original conductivity σ(x, y) at 850 MHz and the
reconstructed profile.

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(a) Original profile (b) Reconstructed with noiseless data.

(c) Reconstructed with SNR = 20 dB. (d) Reconstructed with SNR = 10 dB

10 20 30 40 50 60

Figure 7: Comparison of the original dielectric constant profile r (x, y) at

1000 MHz and the reconstructed profile.

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(a) Original profile (b) Reconstructed with noiseless data.

(c) Reconstructed with SNR = 20 dB. (d) Reconstructed with SNR = 10 dB

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

Figure 8: Comparison of the original conductivity σ(x, y) at 1000 MHz and the
reconstructed profile.

0.6
600 MHz
850 MHz
0.5 1000 MHz

0.4
NRMS1

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Iteration

Figure 9: NRMS1 as a function of iteration for 600 MHz, 850 MHz and 1000 MHz
with a 10 dB SNR.

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1
SNR 10dB
SNR 2dB
0.8 Noiseless

0.6

NRMS2
0.4

0.2

0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Iteration

(a) 600 MHz

1
SNR 10dB
SNR 2dB
0.8 Noiseless

0.6
NRMS2

0.4

0.2

0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Iteration

(b) 850 MHz

0.8

0.6
NRMS2

0.4

0.2 SNR 10dB

SNR 2dB
Noiseless
0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Iteration

(c) 1000 MHz

Figure 10: NRMS2 as a function of iteration for 600 MHz, 850 MHz and
1000 MHz with various SNR.

5 Conclusion
Microwave imaging results using the Born iterative method for hemorrhagic
brain stroke have been presented. The imaging reconstruction algorithm is ex-
plicitly described and tested on a realistic, numerical head phantom consisting
of seven unique tissues. Reconstructed images of the phantom are given at 600
MHz, 850 MHz and 1000 MHz showing the stroke clearly visible in the recon-
structed conductivity profile at each frequency. These results suggest microwave
imaging techniques for head imaging, in particular the BIM, are plausible for

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hemorrhagic stroke imaging. An analysis of the reconstruction error has shown

that it increases and is more sensitive to noise as the frequency is increased.
This is quite expected as tissues in the human head are highly dispersive result-
ing in a severe increase in attenuation as the frequency increases. Future work
will include a comparison of the several competing imaging algorithms and the
realization of a experimental platform.

Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Grant DP120101214.

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