Evaluation of a hemi-spherical wideband antenna array for breast cancer imaging

Using similar techniques to ground penetrating radars, microwave detection of breast tumors is a potential nonionizing and noninvasive alternative to traditional body-imaging techniques. In order to develop an imaging system, the team at Bristol have been working on a number of antenna array prototypes, based around a stacked-patch element, starting with simple pairs of elements and progressing to fully populated planar arrays. As the system commences human subject trials, a curved breast phantom has been developed along with an approximately hemi-spherical conformal array. This contribution will present details of the conformal array design and initial results from this unique experimental imaging system as applied to an anatomically shaped breast phantom.