RADAR SENSING FEATURING BICONICAL ANTENNA AND ENHANCED DELAY AND SUM ALGORITHM FOR EARLY STAGE BREAST CANCER DETECTION

A biconical antenna has been developed for ultra- wideband sensing. A wide impedance bandwidth of around 115% at bandwidth 3.73{14GHz is achieved which shows that the proposed antenna exhibits a fairly sensitive sensor for microwave medical imaging applications. The sensor and instrumentation is used together with an improved version of delay and sum image reconstruction algorithm on both fatty and glandular breast phantoms. The relatively new imaging set-up provides robust reconstruction of complex permittivity proflles especially in glandular phantoms, producing results that are well matched to the geometries and composition of the tissues. Respectively, the signal-to-clutter and the signal-to-mean ratios of the improved method are consistently higher than 5dB and 10dB, corresponding to an average increase in image fldelity of more than 140% compared to conventional radar focusing technique.