An experimental study on the effects of the antenna — Breast surface separation in microwave radar imaging

During the last decade, Microwave Radar has been proposed as a complimentary technology for breast cancer detection. This imaging modality has several features that make it quite desirable from a clinical viewpoint, such as the use of non ionizing radiation. Nevertheless, some aspects of this technology need to be optimized so that it can be routinely used in clinical scenarios. This paper presents a set of experimental results showing the effect of the distance between the antenna and the breast region. Preliminary results show that when the synthetic breast structures are in the reactive zone of the antenna, the recorded responses present a significant degradation that affects the quality of the image.