Frequency domain method for early stage detection of congestive heart failure

Congestive heart failure has one of the highest fatality rates in recent decades. Pulmonary edema is one of the most apparent symptoms of the afore-stated disease in which water accumulates inside the lungs, and therefore alters their tissues´ properties. While microwave signals are able to detect these changes, received signals are extremely weak and noise contaminated. Therefore, a proper signal acquisition and processing techniques should be developed to enhance the reception of the reflected signals to magnify tissue variations. In that regard, a multi-static ultra wide band antenna array configuration as a data collection system and a frequency domain-based method as an imaging algorithm are proposed. The utilized array comprises twelve compact broadband taper slot antennas which are positioned around the girth of the torso to collect the reflected signals. To that end, an image reconstruction method is utilized to detect the changes in the electrical properties of the lungs´ tissues. This method uses Mathieu function to calculate the scattered electric field and power inside the elliptical shape imaging region. The system´s configuration, imaging method and obtained results are reported in this paper.