mmWave SAR Imaging of Superficial Tissue for Metallic Implant Monitoring

Bone implant monitoring in order to assess any unwanted mobility or dislocation of the implant, and thus bone health is a critical issue. Here, we propose a novel millimeter (mm) wave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging technique for superficial implant monitoring. The proposed approach is safe, portable, does not use ionizing rays, portable, and can be continuously or repeatedly used even outside emergency rooms. In this paper, we use 60GHz pulse coherent radar on a moving platform to scan the object of interest. A novel auto-focusing algorithm helps to generate SAR images for the inhomogeneous human body/phantoms. The proposed method detected superficial screw implants on sawbone phantom and human tibial screws with a accuracy of 100% and 76.2% respectively.