Microwave radiometry in biomedicine: a reappraisal

Nearly 20 years ago the first papers appeared on biomedical applications of microwave radiometry, and many other papers have since appeared. Yet, despite its unique capabilities, microwave radiometry has so far received only limited acceptance by the medical community, and little commercial success. The chief reasons, we suggest, are the shallow depth of sensing and the difficulty of extracting imaging information from radiometry signals emitted by electrically heterogeneous media. A secondary factor has been the difficulty of validating many proposed clinical applications for the method--in particular, cancer detection. We suggest that microwave radiometry is a viable method of thermal sensing, but its successful applications are likely to be quite different than those that were originally conceived for the technique.