Performance comparison of a dual-ridge horn antenna and a planar monopole antenna in the microwave breast cancer detection

Detection of the breast cancer tumors at an early stage is very crucial for a successful treatment. Microwave measurement systems have gained attention for this aim over the past decades. This paper, firstly mentions the main techniques used for breast cancer detection. Then the microwave measurement system is introduced and the advantages of using microwaves in detection are given. After that, some simulation and experimental studies are presented to detect tumors. The main purposes of these measurements are demonstrating a simple microwave breast cancer detection system and comparing the performances of the previously designed and proposed planar monopole antenna (PMA) to a dual-ridge horn (DRH) antenna in the system. These antennae are ultra-wideband (UWB) and directional. They have a narrow beamwidth and stable directional pattern in the interval of 3-10 GHz. For the measurements, a material with a low dielectric constant to represent the healthy tissue and another material with a high dielectric constant to represent the tumor are used. The return loss results show that the reflection differences for the case of presence and absence of tumor are more apparent in the PMA measurements than the DRH measurements. Hence, according to the results of this study, the performance of the compact-sized PMA is better than the DRH with a larger size. © 2020, Advanced Electromagnetics.