Team develops wearable antenna for tumour detection

The team, based in the Integrated Nanosystems Development Institute (INDI), describes details in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology and says that its system holds the promise of much earlier detection than mammography.

INDI’s Kody Varahramyan and colleagues, Sudhir Shrestha, Mangilal Agarwal, Azadeh Hemati and Parvin Ghane, said in a statement that their system uses a planar microstrip antenna design on a flexible substrate that is optimised for operation in direct contact with the skin.

The system is said to avoid the 20 per cent microwave signal loss observed with other systems based on matched coupling medium.

Their tests with breast and tumour ‘phantoms’ — model human body systems — shows that the received signal from a tumour is three times the strength from healthy tissue and is well defined relative to background noise level in the image.

The overall goal of the research is to develop a wearable, brassiere-like imaging system that uses non-ionising radiation to detect cancerous breast tissue.