A Study on the Reduction of Frequency Points in Muscle Rupture Microwave Imaging

Injuries in the hamstring muscles are among the most common injuries in sports. We have identified a need for new low-cost diagnostic tools to facilitate accurate diagnostics for a wide range of injured athletes and the general public. Therefore we are developing a microwave-based imaging system for muscle rupture detection based on frequency domain transmission measurements. In this paper, we have investigated the effect of the number of frequencies on the image accuracy in a delay multiply and sum algorithm. The experimental results show that using about 20 frequency points in the range 0.5-2 GHz results in accurate image reconstructions. Compared to using 260 points the decrease in the relative squared error is less than 1%. This is a significant result that paves the path for the development of affordable and compact systems that can be made available widely.