Microwave Imaging (MWI) has been explored as
an alternative to conventional breast tumor screening methods.
It is acknowledged that benign and malignant tumors can be
distinguishable by their architectural features: benign tumors
are often round with well-defined margin, while malignant
tumors have an ill-defined margin and are micro-lobulated or
spiculated. We present a MWI-based systematic analysis of
malignant and benign breast tumors of different sizes, to
evaluate if its characteristics allow differentiating the images.
To this end, we performed measurements on a dry MW setup,
using a slot-based antenna in the 2-5 GHz frequency range to
scan an anthropomorphic breast phantom. We placed inside
eight malignant and benign tumors with 3, 4, …10 mm average
radius, one at a time. This study shows that both types of
tumors can be detected, but not distinguishable only via MWI.
Smaller tumors become harder to detect, the 3 mm tumor
being unreliably caught.