Data acquisition system for harmonic motion microwave Doppler imaging

Harmonic Motion Microwave Doppler Imaging (HMMDI) is a hybrid method proposed for breast tumor detection, which images the coupled dielectric and elastic properties of the tissue. In this paper, the performance of a data acquisition system for HMMDI method is evaluated on breast phantom materials. A breast fat phantom including fibro-glandular and tumor phantom regions is produced. The phantom is excited using a focused ultrasound probe and a microwave transmitter. The received microwave signal level is measured on three different points inside the phantom (fat, fibro-glandular, and tumor regions). The experimental results using the designed homodyne receiver proved the effectiveness of the proposed setup. In tumor phantom region, the signal level decreased about 3 dB compared to the signal level obtained from the fibro-glandular phantom area, whereas this signal was about 4 dB higher than the received signal from the fat phantom.