APPLICATION OF MICROWAVE THERMOGRAPHY FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF BREAST DISEASES WITH REFERENCE TO THE DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA

Abstract

A 4.7 GHz microwave radiometry system was used to measure thermal radiation from the human breast tissue.Three hundred and one female patients of the Breast Clinic have received microwave thermography examination and 136 were selected for this study. Fifty-two of the patients had malignant tumors and 84 had no malignancy.Diagnostic criteria were modified on the base of the relationship between the temperature difference in the symmetrical region of the breast and the final diagnosis, pathological or clinical.When the current diagnostic criteria were used, the accuracy of this method was 72.1%, the sensitivity was 86.1% and the specificity was 63.1%.Of 60 patients, 35 had malignant diseases and 25 had nonmalignant diseases. They were examined by three thermographic examinations, infrared tele-thermography, liquid crystal contact-thermography and microwave thermpgraphy. The accuracy of microwave thermography was 80.0%.Combining two of the three thermographic methods, the improved accuracy by microwave thermography (95.0%) was much higher than that without microwave thermography (86.7%).The results show that diagnostic accuracy would be greatly improved by using microwave thermography together with other thermographic examinations.