3D Quantitative Microwave Imaging with a Regularized Gauss-Newton Method for Breast Cancer Detection

Abstract: The application of a three-dimensional Vectorial Quantitative Microwave Tomography (VQMT) algorithm to the challenging problem of 3D complex permittivity reconstruction in biolog-ical tissues is investigated. In particular, a simulation study on breast cancer imaging is conducted, using dipole excitations in various polarizations and positions in front of the breast at a single frequency. The algorithm is an improved version of the regularized Gauss-Newton imaging method recently presented by the authors. More specifically the application of a subspace preconditioned LSQR algorithm to the Gauss-Newton update systems improves the computational efficiency of the method and the incorporation of constraints and patient specific discretization of the permittivity extend its flexibility and application range