Conventional radar-based image reconstruction techniques fail when they are applied to heterogeneous breast tissue, since the\nunderlying in-breast relative permittivity is unknown or assumed to be constant.This results in a systematic error during the process\nof image formation. A recent trend in microwave biomedical imaging is to extract the relative permittivity from the object under\ntest to improve the image reconstruction quality and thereby to enhance the diagnostic assessment. In this paper, we present a novel\nradar-based methodology for microwave breast cancer detection in heterogeneous breast tissue integrating a 3D map of relative\npermittivity as a priori information. This leads to a novel image reconstruction formulation where the delay-and-sum focusing\ntakes place in time rather than range domain. Results are shown for a heterogeneous dense (class-4) and a scattered fibroglandular\n(class-2) numerical breast phantom using Bristol�s 31-element array configuration.
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