The adoption of microwaves for biomedical imaging has been largely investigated in last years. In fact, it has been demonstrated that human tissues exhibit different electromagnetic properties at microwaves, depending on their typology and physio-pathological status. Moreover, the use of non-ionizing radiations and possibly cheap and portable devices represents the main advantage offered by MWI with respect to other medical imaging techniques.

In this respect, LEMMA’s researchers devote great effort in developing qualitative [6],[8] and quantitative [1]-[5] imaging techniques suitable for medical purposes. In [1] a transmission line model is derived to enhance the electromagnetic field penetration within the breast and improve the image reconstruction for cancer detection. A related study is carried out in [7] for deep pelvic hyperthermia applications. Approach in [2] uses magnetic nanoparticles as contrast agent for microwave breast cancer imaging and Compressive Sensing inspired inversion technique for the reconstruction of the magnetic contrast induced within the tumor. The ‘virtual experiment’ framework is applied in [3] in conjunction with the intrinsic multiresolution feature of the wavelet projection and the one gained by means of a frequency hopping technique, while a different and more effective representation of the unknown contrast function is proposed and successfully exploited in [4],[5]. Finally, preliminary investigations of MWI techniques at millimeter waves is dealt with in [8].

  1. I. Catapano, L. Di Donato, L. Crocco. O. M. Bucci, A. F. Morabito, and T. Isernia, “On quantitative microwave tomography of female breast”, Progress In Electromagnetics Research, vol. 97, pp. 75-93,  2009. [click here]
  2. M. T. Bevacqua and R. Scapaticci, “A Compressive Sensing Approach for 3D Breast Cancer Microwave Imaging with Magnetic Nanoparticles as Contrast Agent,” IEEE Transaction on Medical Imaging, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 665-673, 2016. [click here]
  3. M. T. Bevacqua, R. Palmeri, and R. Scapaticci, “Multiresolution Virtual Experiments for Microwave Imaging of Complex Scenarios,” Electronics, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 153, 2019. [click here]
  4. M. T. Bevacqua, G. G. Bellizzi, L. Crocco, and T. Isernia, “A Method for Quantitative Imaging of Electrical Properties of Human Tissues from Only Amplitude Electromagnetic Data,” Inverse Problem, vol. 25, no. 2, 2019. [click here]
  5. M. T. Bevacqua, G. G. Bellizzi, T. Isernia, and L. Crocco, “A Method for Effective Permittivity and Conductivity Mapping of Biological Scenarios via Segmented Contrast Source Inversion,” Progress In Electromagnetics Research, vol. 164, pp. 1-15, 2019. [click here]
  6. M. T. Bevacqua, N. Abdollahi, I. Jeffrey, T. Isernia and J. LoVetri, “Qualitative Techniques for Generating Spatial Prior Information for Biomedical Microwave Imaging,” 2020 14th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 1-4, 2020. [click here]
  7. G. G. Bellizzi, K. Sumser, and M. T. Bevacqua, “On The Optimal Matching Medium and The Working Frequency in Deep Pelvic Hyperthermia,” IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology, 2020 (in press). [click here]
  8. M. T. Bevacqua, S. Di Meo, L. Crocco, T. Isernia, and M. Pasian, “Millimeter-waves breast cancer imaging via inverse scattering techniques”, IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology, 2021 (in press). [click here]