Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8r8nv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-08T00:57:57.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A compact ultrawideband slotted patch antenna for early stage breast tumor detection applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2022

Mahdi Salimitorkamani*
Affiliation:
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Eskisehir, Turkey
Mehdi Mehranpour
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili (UMA), Ardabil, Iran
Hayrettin Odabasi
Affiliation:
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Eskisehir, Turkey
*
Author for correspondence: Mahdi Salimitorkamani, E-mail: mehdi.s6453@gmail.com
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents a compact ultrawideband slotted patch antenna for early stage tumor detection applications using microwave breast imaging systems. In order to reduce any reflections between the antenna and breast, the antenna is designed and optimized inside a coupling medium with electrical properties similar to that of normal breast tissue as a coupling medium. The wideband performance of the antenna is obtained by adding a rectangular slit and L-shaped sleeves on the ground plane. While the added rectangular slit mainly improves the matching, the L-shaped sleeves improve both the matching and the bandwidth. The antenna operates from 0.9 to 9.6 GHz with a fractional bandwidth of ~165$\%$, providing a good penetration and resolution. In addition, the proposed antenna has a very compact size of 16 × 16 mm2. Furthermore, an antenna array consisting of 31 antennas is formed around a realistic breast phantom in the simulation environment to demonstrate the imaging of a spherical tumor with a diameter of 5 mm inside the breast. The results confirm that the proposed antenna can be used for early stage breast tumor detection purposes.

Information

Type
Biomedical Applications
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with the European Microwave Association
Figure 0

Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed SPA: (a) front view and (b) back view. Design parameters (all in mm) are given as: Hsub = 16, Lsub = 16, wp = 6, lp = 5.8, lf = 4.2, wf = 1.4, W1 = 13, W2 = 15, W3 = 8.4, W4 = 1, L1 = L2 = L3 = 0.5, L4 = 1.75, L5 = 1.25, L6 = 0.75, L7 = 3.5, and L8 = 12.

Figure 1

Fig. 2. Antenna evolution: (a) conventional SPA, (b) modified SPA, (c) the proposed SPA, and (d) comparison of the simulated reflection coefficients for the three antennas. The antennas are simulated inside a coupling medium as described in the text.

Figure 2

Fig. 3. Simulated reflection coefficient characteristics for different values of W4 and W3.

Figure 3

Fig. 4. Simulated surface current distributions for the proposed SPA at three different frequencies: (a) 1.9 GHz, (b) 5.5 GHz, and (b) 8.7 GHz.

Figure 4

Table 1. Comparison of the proposed antenna with other breast cancer imaging antennas when the λ0 is free space wavelength at the lower frequency

Figure 5

Fig. 5. (a) Cross arc probes in the front face of the proposed antenna in the simulation environment for E-plane (xz plane), and H-plane (yz plane), (b) the simulated E-plane and (c) H-plane of the proposed antenna inside the coupling medium.

Figure 6

Fig. 6. (a) Fabrication procedure and (b) measured relative permittivity and the conductivity of the coupling medium by the DAK-3.5 kit probe.

Figure 7

Fig. 7. (a) Front and back views of the fabricated antenna and (b) measurement setup of the antenna when fully immersed in the coupling medium.

Figure 8

Fig. 8. Comparison of the simulated and measured reflection coefficient characteristics inside the fabricated liquid coupling model.

Figure 9

Fig. 9. (a) ACR class II model which is used as the basic breast model. (b) The sketched 3D CAD models of the skin layer (yellow color) and internal environment of the modified breast model (blue color) in Autodesk 3ds Max Software. (c) The applied breast model.

Figure 10

Fig. 10. Configuration of antenna array around the applied breast model.

Figure 11

Fig. 11. Simulated normalized electric field distribution for three different antenna excitation at (a) 2 GHz, (b) 5 GHz, and (c) 8 GHz.

Figure 12

Fig. 12. (a) 2D reconstructed image from a tumor which is positioned at (X = 0 mm, Y = 30 mm, Z = 35 mm) inside of the constructed breast model, and (b) 3D reconstructed image from the detected tumor.