Microwave imaging: Comparison of direct scattering problem solvers

Breast cancer detection has become one of the most emergent tasks these days. A microwave imaging for the breast cancer detection shows several advantages compared to the conventional X-ray mammography. If the test is carried out using the microwave imaging system a person is not exposed to a high dose of the radiation; the X-ray method is less sensitive to radio-graphically dense tissues, etc. A scattering solver is the most important part of the microwave imaging system. The scattering from an unknown object that exhibits a contrast in electric permittivity and conductivity has to be analyzed. There are several approaches for a numerical solution of the problem, e.g. Integral Equations (IE), Finite Differences (FD), Finite Elements (FE) and other methods.In the paper, the formulation of the scattering problem using IE, FD and FE methods is given. These methods are compared from the viewpoint of their suitability to model a scattering problem. Accuracy, computational time, and memory demands are the criteria for the method comparison.