3D Microwave Tomography Using the Soft Prior Regularization Technique: Evaluation in Anatomically-Realistic MRI-Derived Numerical Breast Phantoms

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-10-2019

Journal / Book Title

IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

Objective: Fusion of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) breast images with microwave tomography is accomplished through a soft prior technique, which incorporates spatial information (from MRI), i.e. accurate boundary location of different regions of interest, into the regularization process of the microwave image reconstruction algorithm. Methods: Numerical experiments were completed on a set of 3D breast geometries derived from MR breast data with different parenchymal densities, as well as a simulated tumor to evaluate performance over a range of breast shapes, sizes and property distributions. Results: When the soft prior regularization technique was applied, both permittivity and conductivity relative root mean square error (RRMSE) values decreased by more than 87% across all breast densities, except in two cases where the error decrease was only 55% and 78%. In addition, the incorporation of structural priors increased contrast between tumor and fibroglandular tissue by 59% in permittivity and 192% in conductivity. Conclusion: This study confirmed that the soft prior algorithm is robust in 3D and can function successfully across a range of complex geometries and tissue property distributions. Significance: This study demonstrates that our microwave tomography is capable of recovering accurate tissue property distributions when spatial information from MRI is incorporated through soft prior regularization.

DOI

10.1109/TBME.2019.2892303

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