Recent Advancements in Time-Domain Breast Health Screening: Observations on the Phantom Stability and Wearable Hardware

This work reports observations on the stability of tissue-mimicking breast phantoms over the course of three years in the context of microwave imaging and detection of breast cancer using the time-domain radar approach. The phantom properties are measured using a coaxial dielectric probe. Furthermore, an antenna array configuration, which has demonstrated to be favorable for our specific antenna design, has been experimentally tested with aged and newly fabricated phantoms. The results show that, over a three-year period, the higher-permittivity materials (those that mimic the glandular and tumorous tissue) exhibit more significant deterioration in their electric properties than those of low permittivity (e.g. fat-mimicking materials). This uneven deterioration impacts the dielectric contrast between the aged phantom tissues, the very essence of the hypothesis underpinning the field of microwave imaging. Hence, care must be exercised when aged tissue-mimicking phantoms are used in the controlled experiments for validation of devices intended for microwave breast tumor detection and imaging.