In this paper, we describe a 2-D wideband microwave imaging system intended for biomedical imaging. The system is capable of collecting data from 3 to 6 GHz, with 24 coresident antenna elements connected to a vector network analyzer via a 2 × 24 port matrix switch. As one of the major sources of error in the data collection process is a result of the strongly coupling 24 coresident antennas, we provide a novel method to avoid the frequencies where the coupling is large enough to prevent successful imaging. Through the use of two different nonlinear reconstruction schemes, which are an enhanced version of the distorted born iterative method and the multiplicative regularized contrast source inversion method, we show imaging results from dielectric phantoms in free space. The early inversion results show that with the frequency selection procedure applied, the system is capable of quantitatively reconstructing dielectric objects, and show that the use of the wideband data improves the inversion results over single-frequency data.

Imaging with microwave tomography systems requires both the incident field within the imaging domain as well as calibration factors that convert the collected data to corresponding data in the numerical model used for inversion. The numerical model makes various simplifying assumptions, e.g., 2-D versus 3-D wave propagation, which the calibration coefficients are meant to take into account. For an air-based microwave tomography system, we study two types of calibration techniques-incident and scattered field calibration-combined with two different incident field models: a 2-D line-source and an incident field from full-wave 3-D simulation of the tomography system. Although the 2-D line-source approximation does not accurately model incident field in our system, the use of scattered field calibration with the 2-D line-source provides similar or better images to incident and scattered field calibration with an accurate incident field. Thus, if scattered field calibration is used, a simple (but inaccurate) incident field is acceptable for our microwave tomography system. While not strictly generalizable, we expect our methodology to be applicable to most other microwave tomography systems.

Histogram specification has been successfully used in digital image processing over the years. Mainly used as an image enhancement technique, methods such as histogram equalization (HE) can yield good contrast with almost no effort in terms of inputs to the algorithm or the computational time required. More elaborate histograms can take on problems faced by HE at the expense of having to define the final histograms in innovative ways that may require some extra processing time but are nevertheless fast enough to be considered for real-time applications. This paper proposes a new technique for specifying a histogram to enhance the image contrast. To further evidence our faith on histogram specification techniques, we also discuss methods to modify images, e.g., to help segmentation approaches. Thus, as advocates of these techniques, we would like to emphasize the flexibility of this image processing approach to do more than enhancing images.

We present a pilot study using a microwave tomography system in which we image the forearms of 5 adult male and female volunteers between the ages of 30 and 48. Microwave scattering data were collected at 0.8 to 1.2 GHz with 24 transmitting and receiving antennas located in a matching fluid of deionized water and table salt. Inversion of the microwave data was performed with a balanced version of the multiplicative-regularized contrast source inversion algorithm formulated using the finite-element method (FEM-CSI). T1-weighted MRI images of each volunteer’s forearm were also collected in the same plane as the microwave scattering experiment. Initial “blind” imaging results from the utilized inversion algorithm show that the image quality is dependent on the thickness of the arm’s peripheral adipose tissue layer; thicker layers of adipose tissue lead to poorer overall image quality. Due to the exible nature of the FEM-CSI algorithm used, prior information can be readily incorporated into the microwave imaging inversion process. We show that by introducing prior information into the FEM-CSI algorithm the internal anatomical features of all the arms are resolved, significantly improving the images. The prior information was estimated manually from the blind inversions using anad hocprocedure.

The resolution of an experimental microwave tomography (MWT) system is investigated. Using two cylindrical nylon targets and an operating frequency of 5 GHz, a separation resolution of 2 mm, or 1/30 of a wavelength, is achieved. While this resolution is among the highest reported in the literature, it is not a sufficiently robust indicator of the expected resolution obtainable for complex targets, and this is shown with further examples of more complicated targets. However, the basic separation resolution limit obtained is a good way of comparing various aspects of different MWT systems.