Microwave radiometric imaging (MWI) for the characterisation of breast tumours^*

¹ Institut d'Électronique et de Microélectronique du Nord, Département Hyperfréquences et Semiconducteurs (UMR CNRS 9929), Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, 59655 Villeneuve d'Ascq Cedex, France
² CHRU de Lille, Hôpital Jeanne de Flandre, av. Eugène Avinée, 59000 Lille
³ CHRU de Lille, Centre d'Étude et de Recherche en Informatique Médicale, 2 rue Oscar Lambret, 59000 Lille

Corresponding author: bertrand.bocquet@iemn.univ-lille1.fr

Received: 26 July 1999
Revised: 11 January 2000
Accepted: 27 January 2000
Published online: 15 April 2000

Abstract

We have developed a new prototype of microwave radiometric imaging devoted to the measurement of the temperature inside a dissipative media. The main application we are looking for, is the non-invasive thermometry of human tissues. We obtain quite satisfactory results in the early characterisation of breast tumours in terms of malignancy or benignity. We have, at this moment in progress, a clinical evaluation of patients that gives good results at an intermediary stage. To improve the spatial resolution, we have developed an inversion process based on a regularisation method in the spatial frequency domain, associated with a Deriche filter for threshold extraction. We show that this process is well suited to our problem and can be applied to clinical images for a quantitative retrieval of the temperature.