Dipole Array Sensor for Microwave Breast Cancer Detection

In this paper, a novel design of a near-field dipole antenna sensor array for breast tumor detection is presented. The proposed sensor consists of four electrically small dipole antennas fed by a single port. Due to the proven fact that breast tumors have higher dielectric properties than the surrounding normal tissues, the proposed sensor is utilized for detecting breast tumors by evaluating the variations of the sensor's response of two cases, normal and abnormal, of the breast tissues. A simulation study is performed using both normal and abnormal numerical breast phantoms with different sizes of tumors inserted at different locations. Simulation results show the proposed sensor detected the inserted tumors at various locations inside the normal breast phantom due to an increased area of sensitivity of the sensor by using multiple sensors array. An experimental study is conducted on breast chicken meat that mimics a healthy breast and two cases of tumors including tumors made of oil and gelatin mixture and conductive spheres with different sizes inserted at different locations inside the chicken meat. Experimental results show that the proposed sensor has higher sensitivity for detecting different sizes of breast tumors placed at multiple locations.