Microwave imaging: From soft towards hard tissue monitoring

Microwave imaging (MI) has grown in recent years as a promising technique for breast cancer detection. Its physical principle exploits the different characteristics of normal and tumoral breast tissues. The first prototypes of MI for breast cancer detection are being developed, but little effort has been spent to employ MI in other districts of the body. In this work we propose new applications for the MI, exploring its potentialities in the analysis of soft and hard tissues, proposing two examples: the thyroid and the bone. A numerical model of the thyroid is built and examined; a two dimensional map of the numerical model of the thyroid with the inclusion of a spherical 0.6 cm radius tumor has been constructed. The analysis of the bone was focused on the detectability of the presence of osteoporosis in the bone. This analysis has been performed experimentally, due to the lack of literature on osteoporotic bone dielectric behaviour.