Microwave Breast Imaging Incorporating Material Property Dependencies

Abstract

Material property dependencies are introduced in an optimization-based approach to solving the inverse scattering problem associated with microwave breast imaging. Specifically, functional relationships between the real and imaginary parts of the complex permittivity are estimated and introduced as prior information when reconstructing the complex permittivity using the Gauss-Newton Inversion (GNI) algorithm. Introducing the functional dependency forces the algorithm to seek physically meaningful tissue properties, eliminating spurious solutions that are often seen in breast reconstructions. The functional dependency between properties is built directly into the optimization routine. The inversion model used in the GNI technique is based on the discontinuous Galerkin discretization of the partial differential equation formulation of the electromagnetic problem.