Limited Multi-Static Calibration Technique without a Phantom for the Detection of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a serious disease that affects many women each year. The current benchmark in detection is the mammogram but recent efforts have been made in alternative detection methods, the most promising is microwave detection. The method focused on works by illuminating the breast with a pulse and detecting any reflected signals, making it similar to ground penetrating radar. A key problem though is the reflection of the pulse from the skins surface and direct signals between adjacent antennas. Calibration to remove these commonly uses a breast phantom however there is wide variability in tissue properties making a universal phantom unrealistic. Using a mismatched phantom results in performance degradation. This paper introduces a new method to calibrate a system using only received signals through a preset antenna layout and averaging scheme, which overcomes the conventional method problem and improves the system performance