In vitro detection of skin cancer using an UWB stacked micro strip patch antenna with microwave imaging

Abstract

The inherent advantages of microwave imagining (MWI) being noninvasive and nonionizing for cancer detection, has attracted the attention of researchers in this area. Therefore, the present research article proposes an UWB (ultra-wideband) stacked MSA (Micro-strip antenna) for MWI of skin cancer. The proposed research work precisely focuses on the diagnosis of skin cancer in human forearm using the designed MSA in mono-static radar based configuration to collect S parameter data and process it to form an image of the scanned body area. The proposed UWB SAMPA (stacked aperture coupled micro-strip patch antenna) has three layered stacked aperture coupled geometry with a defected ground structure with dimensions 36 × 30 × 4.85 mm3. A simulated and measured bandwidth of 6.23 GHz (6.14 to 12.37 GHz) and 5.28 GHz (5.72 to 11 GHz) are observed and a gain of 6.3 and 6.4 dB is reported respectively. The in vitro detection of skin cancer is done by fabricating a bio mimic of human forearm with same electrical properties as that of human skin. The proposed SAMPA is used to collect S parameter data from the scan of forearm phantom. This data is then processed in beamforming algorithms to create a 2D dielectric profile of the scanned forearm area. The multiply Delay and Sum with Coherent factor (CF-DMAS) beam forming algorithm is utilized for reconstruction of the 2D image of the cancerous effected area along with its locations and size in MATLAB. The proposed MWI procedure is validated experimentally with the prototype of proposed SAMPA and a human forearm phantom after simulations in CST MWS. The proposed SAMPA is also safe for the human exposure, as it has simulated specific absorption rate (SAR) on the forearm phantom of 1.013 and 1.09 at frequency 7.04 and 8.67 GHz respectively.