Abstract
Microwave radiometry is a spectral measurement technique for resolving the electromagnetic radiation of matter when its temperature is above absolute zero. The radio-thermometer utilises this technique and consequently can provide temperature distributions in subcutaneous biological tissues. A new phantom was proposed that imitates a mammary gland tumour, and the brightness temperature was observed using radio-thermometers operated at different frequencies, 1.75 GHz and 3 GHz. The proposed phantom, simulating heat diffusion propagated by tissues around real tumours, revealed that the thermal characteristics of the tumour imitator were well matched to the heat transfer properties of a real tumour and a proportional linear relationship between the location of the tumour imitator and the brightness temperature in a homogenous medium was established. From experiments using the proposed mammary gland tumour phantom and a clinical trial on patients with breast cancer, it could be concluded that a radio-thermometer with a short wavelength (λ=10 cm, i.e., f=3 GHz) is useful to resolve a thermal anomaly at a shallow depth in an homogenous medium such as a breast.
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Lee, J.W., Lee, S.M., Kim, K.S. et al. Experimental investigation of the mammary gland tumour phantom for multifrequency microwave radio-thermometers. Med. Biol. Eng. Comput. 42, 581–590 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02347538
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02347538