Preliminary Tests of Axillary Microwave Imaging with Healthy Volunteers

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women and its early diagnosis is essential to guarantee a good prognosis.The axillary lymph nodes can be affected by breast cancer and the existence or not of metastases in these structures is decisive for breast cancer staging.Microwave Imaging (MWI) has been studied to aid axillary lymph node diagnosis and overcome sensitivity and specificity limitations reported in other imaging modalities.In this study, we performed axillary MWI examinations with female healthy volunteers using our MWI prototype -being the first study of the axillary area to be carried out with volunteers worldwide.The shape variability of the axillary region was analysed in 22 volunteers, showing the importance of selecting appropriate reference points to position the volunteers, in preparation for patient studies.