The design of mammary gland tumor phantom for microwave radiometers

Microwave radiometry is the spectral measurement technique of resolving the electromagnetic radiation of all matter whose temperature is above absolute zero. This technique utilized the electromagnetic noise field generated by a thermal volume similar to a mechanism existing in biological tissues. One particular application of microwave radiometry is for analyzing the temperature differentials inside the human body to detect and diagnose some crucial pathologic conditions. For general evaluation of radiometers, we propose a new mammary gland tumor phantom simulating the heat diffusion propagated by tissues around tumors. Theoretical researches of human tumors have revealed the fact that the temperature distribution of tissues around a tumor forms gaussian statistics. To comply with this physiological property, we built a tumor imitator composed of two parts, pseudo-tumor and thermo-anomaly, and observed the temperature distribution of the tumor imitator inside a phantom. Our experimental results showed that the thermal properties of the tumor imitator well agreed with heat transfer properties of a real tumor.