Conformal microwave tomography using a broadband non-contacting monopole antenna array

Microwave imaging has shown clinical value based on its ability to detect a wide range of dielectric properties. Tomographic microwave images are traditionally reconstructed using a uniform mesh. Dartmouth College's microwave tomographic imaging system requires that imaged volumes be submerged in the system's coupling medium. Due to the fact that the electrical properties of the coupling medium are known, we have investigated a conformal imaging technique that deploys the reconstruction mesh directly to the imaged zone, such that all reconstruction nodes lie on or within the volume of interest. The broadband nature of the system [.5-3 GHz] allows the use of a frequency-hopping, phase-unwrapping technique, where low frequency phase information is used to guide the phase unwrapping at higher frequencies. In this paper we present the results from a simulation and phantom experiment to verify the use of conformal microwave imaging with our current imaging system.