Synergistic Combination of Microwaves and Acoustic Signals: Towards Improved Breast Imaging
Date
2019-03-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Microwave-based breast imaging techniques offer the convenience of frequently-repeated scans involving no breast compression, non-ionizing radiation, inexpensive scan costs, sensitivity to water content and low-complexity 3D image reconstruction. These benefits are well-suited for its application in breast health monitoring and treatment surveillance for which there is no current established approach. However, limited imaging resolution and target localization accuracy necessitate improvements in image quality for clinical applications. The integration of prior structural information has been seen to benefit microwave-based breast imaging techniques, including microwave tomography (MWT) and microwave radar (MWR)-based approaches. The sources of this structural prior explored in the literature include alternate imaging modalities such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The ultrasound (US) signals with their short wavelength, low loss and small footprint may also provide this opportunity. The aim of this work is to investigate the possibility of extracting prior information from US signals and integrating this information into radar-based microwave image reconstructions. The synergistic combination of these two modalities improves the imaging focus, resolution, target detection and localization accuracy. In addition, the integration of structural information provides important contextual information for results interpretation as well as enhances the robustness of the method to the variations in breast shape, size, density, number of tumour inclusions and their locations. To support this development process, methods of constructing and generating a repository of realistic numerical breast models have also been presented. These models offer flexibility and reconfigurability to meet varying requirements of developing imaging technologies. They are applied to develop the proposed dual-modality imaging technology, verify its performance and compare it with the state-of-the-art MWR imaging approach.
Description
Keywords
Dual modality breast cancer imaging, Microwave and ultrasound-based breast imaging, Breast treatment monitoring, Numerical breast models, Breast models repository
Citation
Omer, M. (2019). Synergistic Combination of Microwaves and Acoustic Signals: Towards Improved Breast Imaging (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.