Development of a Compact UWB Antenna for Bone Cancer Detection Using a Non-Invasive Microwave Imaging Technique

A compact ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna is proposed in this study to detect bone cancer through a non-invasive microwave imaging approach. This technique utilizes non-ionizing radiation, ensuring a safe and secure method without any risk of harmful radiation exposure. The proposed UWB antenna design includes a half-flower-shaped (HFS) patch and a modified ground plane, with dimensions measuring 14 × 27 × 0.8 mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>. Based on a reflection coefficient of -10 dB, the antenna operates in a frequency range of 3.15 GHz to 11.5 GHz and has a peak gain of 4.02 dBi at 9.5 GHz. The performance of the proposed UWB antenna is evaluated by importing a hugo model into the CST MWS to simulate a realistic scenario of a human body part. This hugo model comprises four types of tissue: skin, fat, muscle, and bone. The tumor tissue is embedded within the bone area, and bistatic modeling is carried out. Moreover, the time-domain features demonstrate that the antenna has the potential to be an appropriate candidate for microwave imaging of bone cancer. In addition, the tumor location's depth is also estimated using the ground penetrating radar (GPR) algorithm.