Systematic Performance Evaluation for the Detection of Breast Tumors with Sinusoidal Corrugated Antipodal Vivaldi Antennas Utilizing DAS and It-DAS Methodologies.

This work presents a study where a Sinusoidal Corrugated Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna (SC-AVA) operating in the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) region is employed as a transducer for microwave imaging of a cancerous breast. The functionality of the antenna within the UWB range is initially confirmed through thorough testing of performance parameters, including return loss, gain, radiation pattern, and group delay. Subsequently, its practical application in biomedical imaging is evaluated by measuring Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) readings at multiple frequencies within the operational range. The SAR readings are obtained from an EM simulator by modelling both homogeneous and heterogeneous breast phantoms and placing them in close proximity to the transducer. The SAR values are recorded at various frequencies, and it is determined that these readings comply with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulations. The modelled SC-AVA is further utilized in the detection of a single tumor in a homogeneous breast phantom and multiple tumors in a realistic heterogeneous breast phantom. These phantoms are developed in a laboratory environment and imaged using an in-house developed monostatic microwave imaging setup. To gather preliminary information about the target, a homogeneous phantom with one tumor is imaged initially. Subsequently the heterogeneous phantom with two embedded tumors is imaged in this study. The imaging results demonstrate that tumors of different sizes can be clearly visualized in both breast phantoms using the SC-AVA, employing image reconstruction algorithms such as Delay and Sum (DAS) and iterative Delay and Sum (it-DAS). Furthermore, a comparison of the reconstructed images reveals that the it-DAS reconstruction algorithm produces images with improved clarity compared to the DAS algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]