Elise C. Fear, Associate Professor
Electrical Engineering
University of Calgary

Microwave imaging techniques have been proposed as a complement to currently used breast examination methods, such as x-ray mammography. Microwave approaches are based on the electromagnetic properties of breast tissues. This talk will review several recent studies reporting the properties of various healthy and malignant breast tissues over a broad frequency range. Methods for creating microwave images of the breast include tomography and radar-based approaches. Radar-based approaches involve illuminating the breast with a short pulse of microwaves, then recording reflections at one or multiple antennas.

At the University of Calgary, we are developing a radar-based system for breast imaging called Tissue Sensing Adaptive Radar (TSAR). A prototype system will be described with an emphasis on the ultra-wideband antennas utilized to collect reflections. The TSAR algorithm for translating the reflections into 3D images will be discussed, including breast surface estimation, reducing unwanted reflections, and tumor response estimation.

Elise C. Fear is currently an Associate Professor in of Electrical Engineering at the University of Calgary. Her research interests involve the interaction of electromagnetic fields with living systems, including the interaction of low-frequency fields with biological cells and microwave breast cancer detection. Dr. Fear is currently serving as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, and was awarded the 2007 Outstanding Paper Award from the same journal.