IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on Advanced Materials and Processes (IMWS-AMP 2017), 20-22 September 2017,

Pavia, Italy

High-Resolution mm-Wave Imaging Techniques and

Systems for Breast Cancer Detection
S. Di Meo 1, G. Matrone1, M. Pasian1, M. Bozzi1, L. Perregrini1, G. Magenes1,
A. Mazzanti1, F. Svelto1, P.E. Summers2, G. Renne3, L. Preda2, 4, 5, M. Bellomi2, 6
1 2 3
Dept. of Electrical, Computer and Department of Radiology, European Department of Pathology and
Biomedical Engineering Institute of Oncology, Milano, Italy Laboratory Medicine, European
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy paul.summers@ieo.it Institute of Oncology, Milano, Italy
simona.dimeo01@ateneopv.it giuseppe.renne@ieo.it
4 5 6
Department of Clinical-Surgical, National Center of Oncological Department of Oncology, University
Diagnostic and Pediatric Sciences, Hadrontherapy (CNAO Foundation), of Milano, Milano, Italy
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy Pavia, Italy massimo.bellomi@unimi.it
lorenzo.preda@unipv.it

Abstract — Breast cancer places fifth as a cause of death
from cancer, especially among women. However, screening
techniques have increased the success rate of medical therapies.
Based on the well-known limitations of the most commonly used
screening methods, microwave imaging has been proposed as an
alternative solution. By detecting the dielectric discontinuities in
the tissues, microwave imaging systems are able to detect
malignant lesions, without exposing the patient to ionizing
radiations. With respect to the actual microwave prototypes, the
novel system proposed in this paper works at an higher central
frequency, i.e. 33.25 GHz, and with a bandwidth of about 13.5
GHz. These two values determine a higher achievable
resolution, which would make it possible an early-stage cancer
detection. However, at these frequencies the propagation
medium is particularly challenging in terms of loss and
penetration depth. Consequently, the beam-forming algorithms
used to form the image play a crucial role to obtain optimum
results even in a lossy medium.
In this paper, the feasibility study of a system based on a
mm-waves multi-static radar architecture is presented, focusing
the attention on the comparison between two different beam-
forming algorithms.
Keywords—Biomedical applications; breast cancer detection;
beamforming; link budget; microwave and mm-wave imaging.
I. INTRODUCTION
Breast cancer is one of the most common type of tumor
among women. However, the continuous development of
diagnostic devices and imaging techniques have allowed to
achieve increasingly accurate and early diagnosis [1]. The
most used imaging techniques include X-ray mammography,
ultrasound echography, and magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI), but they exhibit a number of drawbacks that prevent
their use on a large scale for screening applications. For this
reason, microwave imaging has been recently proposed as a
complementary imaging technique [2]–[5]. Indeed,
microwave systems make use of non-ionizing radiations, are
available at relatively low-cost, and are suitable for an
This work was supported by the Italian Association for Cancer Research
(AIRC).
operator-independent implementation, thus allowing for a
possible periodic screening of a large fraction of the
population. Different system architectures have been
proposed, and they all rely on the dielectric contrast between
normal and tumorous breast tissues [6], [7]. However, all of
them share similar operational frequencies, not exceeding a
few GHz, and consequently in some cases they prevent
achieving an early detection, because of the reduced image
resolution [2], [8].
The use of higher frequencies, in the mm-wave range,
envisaged by a number of works, would yield to better spatial
resolution and to the downscaling of many components, but
unfortunately at the cost of an higher signal attenuations
inside breast tissues [9]–[11]. Therefore, an accurate
feasibility study, on the grounds of recent experimental
results on the dielectric properties of breast tissues up to 50
GHz ([12], [13]), is very important to assess the potentials of
such an approach. In particular, a key point is the represented
by the beam-forming algorithms, which are fundamental to
obtain optimal image even for lossy media.
This paper presents a multi-static radar architecture for
breast cancer detection working at a central frequency of 30
GHz. In section II, the system architecture is analyzed. In
Section III, the full-wave models is presented, and the
resulting images using both standard Delay And Sum (DAS)
and non-linear Filtered-Delay Multiply And Sum (F-DMAS)
beam-forming algorithms are shown. Finally, Section IV
derives the conclusions and discusses the potentials of the
proposed approach.
II. MULTI-STATIC RADAR ARCHITECTURE
In the design of a new imaging system for breast cancer
detection based on mm-waves, it is fundamental to increase
as much as possible the Signal-to-Noise ratio (S/N) to
compensate for the large propagation losses. Once the
transmitting power and the receiver sensitivity are
determined on the basis of safety issues and technological

978-1-5386-0480-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on Advanced Materials and Processes (IMWS-AMP 2017), 20-22 September 2017, Pavia, Italy
availability, respectively, the two key points to increase the
S/N (hence, the penetration depth) are the integration time,
which is responsible for the collected noise N, and the array
architecture, which is fundamental to increase the signal S.
A fundamental limitation for the former is usually given by
the motion artifacts created by the patient, while for the latter,
the use of several radiators placed around the breast make it
possible to retrieve much more information about the tumor
presence compared to a mono-static (one single antenna
which transmits and receives) or bi-static (one antenna
transmits and another antenna receives) approach. For this
reason, in the present work a multi-static radar architecture is
considered.
However, for a lossy medium, as it can be considered the
breast tissue at mm-wave frequencies, it is fundamental to
optimize the radiator layout and number. In particular, the
multi-static radar architecture considered in this paper is
intended to be based on a 2-port Vector Network Analyzer
(VNA) (or on a dedicated transceiver), an array of M
antennas, and a 2:M switch matrix, either electro-mechanical
or integrated, to connect the VNA ports to the antennas. The
working principle, named Synthetic Aperture Focusing (SAF)
technique, consists in connecting the VNA transmitter to a
single antenna, and the VNA receiver in turn to the remaining
M-1 antennas, one at a time, collecting the signal back-
scattered by the target. This procedure is repeated M times,
each time using a different transmitting antenna, thus
collecting the back-scattered signal M(M-1) times. A sketch
of the proposed system is shown in Fig. 1. As a consequence,
in the ideal case in which all the received signals would be
equal to each other, they would coherently summed M(M-1)
times, improving the received power by a factor equal to
(M(M-1))2. At the same time, the incoherent receiver noise
would be integrated M(M-1) times, yielding to an S/N
improvement factor of F = M(M-1). However, in the real
case, the combined effect of different propagation distances
and lossy medium returns different received signals at the
reciver antennas.
First, with the aim of minimizing this effect, the circular
(conformal) layout appears to be a good solution for breast
cancer imaging because the propagation distances are more
similar to each other with respect to other configurations, e.g.,
a linear layout [9]. Second, if a receving antenna is too distant
from the target, it will marginally contribute to the collected
signal S, because of the large propagation loss, while it will
contribute as all the other receivers to the overall noise N.
This effect deteriorates the improvement factor F. Thus, it is
important to calculate the optimum number of radiators [9].
III. FULL-WAVE MODELS AND IMAGE ALGORITHMS
A. Full-wave models
Full-wave simulations were carried out using the Ansys
EM solver HFSS. Open-ended WR28 waveguides, with a
mono-modal bandwidth of 13.5 GHz [26.5 – 40] GHz, were
used as radiators because of the moderate antenna gain that
allows for providing a coverage of the entire breast).
978-1-5386-0480-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
Fig. 1. Sketch of the multi-static radar architecture. Drawing not to scale.
The dielectric properties of breast tissues, normal and
tumorous, are derived from a recent experimental campaign
on ex-vivo samples obtained at surgery, so for fat tissue ε' = 3
and ε'' = 0.3, while for tumor tissue ε' = 19.02 and ε'' = 20.03,
are set [12], [13]. It can be calculated that for a breast radius
of 5 cm and a target at a depth of 4 cm, the optimum number
of antennas is M = 32 [9]. The targets are modeled as a 2mm-
diameter tumors at different depth and lateral locations. It is
worth noting that the antenna crosstalk calibration has been
performed by subtracting the results without targets to the
ones with the targets in the illuminated scenario [10].
B. Image reconstruction algorithms
Given the large importance of image reconstruction
algorithms for this type of applications, two different
approaches were implemented to evaluate different
possibilities. In particular, the performance obtained with
standard DAS beam-forming was compared to that achieved
by F-DMAS [14], i.e. a non-linear beam-forming algorithm
developed for ultrasound B-mode imaging, which derives
from the DMAS beam-former introduced for breast confocal
microwave imaging in [15].
The first step in both cases consists in computing the
radio-frequency (RF) signals vn,m(t) (with n=1…M, m=1…M
and n≠m) received by each antenna in the M-element array,
after each transmit event. To do so, the scattering matrix
coefficients computed by HFSS are imported in Matlab and
convolved with a synthetic transmitted signal (i.e. a Gaussian
RF pulse, with a center frequency of 33.25 GHz and a ~40%
bandwidth at -20 dB). Besides, in this case an amplitude
equalization factor, compensating for the wave radial
spreading, is also applied to the obtained signals.
Each received signal has then to be synthetically focused
in each pixel (i, j) of the image. The focusing delays to be
applied to vn,m(t) are computed by considering the wave
traveling path from the n-th transmitter to the focal point in (i,
j) and back to the m-th receiver. In this work, differently from
the SAF configurations previously tested for F-DMAS in
ultrasound imaging [16], all the K=M(M-1) signals received
after each transmit event, and focused following the above
procedure, were used as inputs of the beam-formers. If we
denote them as sk(i,j), with k=1…K, then, for each pixel (i, j),
the DAS beam-formed output is computed by simply
summing them up:
K
y( i , j ) =  sk ( i , j ) (1)
k =1
IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on Advanced Materials and Processes (IMWS-AMP 2017), 20-22 September 2017, Pavia, Italy

while the F-DMAS beam-formed output yF(i, j) is obtained as: REFERENCES

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TABLE I
Focusing,” Ultrasonics., vol. 75, pp. 216-225, 2017.
RANGE (δR) AND LATERAL RESOLUTION (δL)
Target 1 (On Axis) Target 2 (Off Axis)
DAS F-DMAS DAS F-DMAS
δR 8.1 mm 6.4 mm 5.1 mm 4.4 mm
δL 3.4 mm 2.3 mm 3.7 mm 2.4 mm

V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper some preliminary results of a feasibility
study of a new mm-wave imaging system for breast cancer
detection are discussed. A full-wave model, implementing
the dielectric properties of breast tissues (normal and
tumorous) experimentally derived from ex-vivo samples,
were implemented, and two different image reconstruction
algorithms (DAS and F-DMAS) were compared, showing the
possibility to image targets at a depth of 4 cm.

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