Medical microwave imaging and analysis

Medical imaging is usually a noninvasive tool to visualize the interior of the body of both healthy and diseased subjects. The imaging of the body is done for clinical analysis and detection of any abnormality. The most common examples of medical imaging are imaging done in different phases of cancer management, imaging for detecting bone fracture, and identifying tumors. Depending upon the application, clinical data for imaging can be obtained through a variety of techniques. These techniques rely on x-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), ultrasound (US), and positron emission tomography (PET). Different techniques provide images with different resolution. Some of the techniques are costly due to the high maintenance and implementation cost of the equipment. Mostly, the equipment are bulky and are not portable. Moreover, some may use ionizing radiation that may have health risks. For example, MRI can provide a good resolution image that can be used for applications such as brain imaging for tumor detection, making the analysis easier. However, MRI equipment is costly and has high maintenance costs. Similarly, CT has a good spatial resolution, but uses x-rays that may ionize the tissue, posing a possible health risk. Moreover, CT cannot be used reliably for imaging soft tissues [1]. PET can be more informative when it comes to soft tissue imaging or providing functional information, but suffers from poor spatial resolution [1]. X-rays are most commonly used in mammography for breast cancer detection. Apart from being ionizing in nature, for x-rays, high false alarm has also been observed in mammography [2].