Antenna Array Configuration in Holographic Microwave Imaging

Abstract

Biomedical imaging has played an important role in identifying and monitoring the effectiveness of the current state of the art treatments for many diseases. We recently proposed a novel holographic microwave imaging array (HMIA) technique for lesion detection. One of the most important considerations of this technique is the antenna array configuration. This paper demonstrates investigation of using various antenna array configurations to generate a high-resolution microwave image by using the HMIA technique. Both simulation and experimental results are obtained and compared using spiral, random and regularly spaced array configurations to fully demonstrate the effectiveness of antenna arrays to the HMIA technique. The results show that the proposed spiral and random array configurations have the ability to produce high-resolution images at significantly lower cost compared to regularly spaced array. The potential biomedical imaging applications of the research findings would be breast cancer detection and/or brain stroke detection.