Breast cancer detection feasibility with UWB flexible antennas on wearable monitoring vest

This paper presents a study on a monitoring vest embedded with multiple flexible ultrawideband (UWB) antenna elements used for detection of possible breast cancer tissue. The cancer detection is based on identifying differences in the UWB radio channel characteristics between several on-body antennas located around the breast. The antennas are small-sized, made of flexible material, operating at whole UWB band as well as in the ISM 2.4 GHz band, thus can be used in portable telemedicine applications. Additionally, the paper presents realistic simulation results on the impact of the cancer tissue on the signal propagation and channel characteristics at different frequency ranges using an anatomical voxel model. The simulations are carried out using electromagnetic simulation software CST Studio Suite, including power flow analysis and radio channel evaluations. The results show that, such as, tumor of size 1 cm causes a clear difference in a signal propagation through a breast tissue, which can be seen in a power flow variation in the vicinity of the cancerous area. This can be also seen both in frequency and time domain channel characteristics between different on-body antennas. The promising results show that flexible UWB antenna vest could be developed for self-monitoring of breast health and initial detection of breast cancers.