Design challenges of an UWB system for breast cancer detection

In Ultra-Wideband (UWB) microwave imaging for breast cancer detection, UWB pulses illuminate the breast and the echoes are processed to create images. Adoption in screening campaigns requires the development of a fully-engineered medical imaging tool. In this paper we report on our experience with the design of this kind of UWB imaging system and illustrate some of the challenges the designers have to deal with at various levels, ranging from circuit-level choices to system-level architectural decisions, and to hardware/software partitioning of the imaging algorithms.