A breast imaging model using microwaves and a time domain three dimensional reconstruction method

Abstract—An iterative reconstruction algorithm for three-dimensional (3-D) microwave tomography by using time-domain microwave data is applied to detect breast tumor. A numeric breast model with randomly distributed glandular tissues (random size and permittivity) with a tu-mor is designed for the calculation of synthetic microwave data. An “air phantom ” consisting of a section of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe filled with styrofoam and a thin glass cylinder is constructed for col-lecting microwave data in laboratory. The “breast ” and “air phantom” are reconstructed. Reconstruction results show that the “tumor ” in th