Fear, Elise C.Omer, Muhammad2019-03-042019-03-042019-03-01Omer, 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.http://hdl.handle.net/1880/109930Microwave-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.enUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Dual modality breast cancer imagingMicrowave and ultrasound-based breast imagingBreast treatment monitoringNumerical breast modelsBreast models repositoryEngineering--BiomedicalEngineering--Electronics and Electricaldoctoral thesis10.11575/PRISM/36159