Dielectric Characterization of Breast Phantoms for Phaseless Microwave Imaging Focused on Tumor Identification

In this work, the dielectric characterization of human tissue-mimicking phantoms is analyzed and tested for breast imaging applications. Phantom samples are obtained by using common and easily available ingredients. They are characterized within the 0.5–5 GHz frequency range, by adopting an open ended-coaxial probe measurement setup. The permittivity behavior of the simulated tissues are compared with some existing reference models for breast tissues. Furthermore, the measured tissues phantoms values are exploited to simulate a series of realistic breast models with different densities. Starting from this revised modeling, a phaseless microwave imaging technique proposed by the same authors is tested.