RF Radar Breast Health Monitoring: System Evaluation with Post-Biopsy Marker

This work reports on the first systematic experimental study on tissue phantoms that evaluates the efficacy of the radiofrequency (RF) multistatic radar for breast health monitoring in the presence of a titanium site marker, typically inserted post-biopsy. We show results of breast phantom measurements for a homogenous fat phantom in several scenarios: all-fat phantom simulating a simple healthy case, a case with an added small 1 cm diameter tumor, a case with a glandular insertion, and finally, a scenario of a tumor embedded in gland. To evaluate the system's performance with respect to post-biopsy site markers, we then show investigations of the system performance with the same phantom and a biopsy marker attached to a glandular insertion with and without an embedded tumor, and compare the imaging results to those phantoms without the biopsy marker. We conclude that our RF radar can detect the tumor despite the presence of a biopsy site marker, and that the conductive titanium marker does not interfere with the system's intended function.