Miniaturization techniques for antennas designed for microwave-based heart failure detection systems

Miniaturization techniques for antennas designed for microwave-based heart failure detection systems are explained. Heart failure is a highly malignant heart disease that causes difficulties for the heart to pump sufficient blood to body organs. Pulmonary edema is one of the most apparent symptoms of heart failure where fluids are accumulated in the lungs and cause a shortness of breath. Hence, a constant monitoring of lungs is one of the most efficient ways to detect heart failure in an early stage. A microwave based detection system can be a reasonable alternative for the current tools, such as CT-Scan and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that cannot be used for long term monitoring. Antennas are one of the key elements in any microwave-based detection system. Due to the compromise between the required penetration and resolution, a low microwave frequency band (around 0.5-1 GHz) is used in heart failure detection. Thus, designing antenna arrays, which operate efficiently at that band and occupy the available space for their operation with low level of coupling, requires compact antenna elements. Different miniaturization techniques for antennas specifically designed for microwave-based heart failure detection system are explained in this paper.