Microwave reflectometry for noninvasive imaging of skin abnormalities

In this paper, a microwave microscope is presented for characterization of skin abnormalities. A coplanar waveguide probe is designed and fabricated for high-resolution near-field imaging of the biological samples. Several simulations and measurement studies are described to present the capability of the proposed probe in identification of different tissues and the detection of fat masses at different depths. In addition, two methods are used to eliminate the measurement noise which is caused by non-targeted tissues. Then, the contours around the masses are obtained applying an edge detection method. The measurement results show that the proposed probe can detect the fat masses with amplitude contrast about 15 dB at a λ/10 (at 14.36 GHz) standoff distance. The proposed microscope is easy to fabricate, and provides a low-cost solution for fast and accurate skin cancer detection of abnormalities in human body such as early detection of small tumors in breast or skin cancers.