Distance compensation-based dual adaptive artifact removal algorithm in microwave breast tumor imaging system

Microwave imaging techniques have been rapidly developed in the medical field due to its non-invasive and nonradiological advantages. Pre-artifact removal is a critical procedure for desirable imaging quality produced by microwave breast imaging systems. However, current methods do not sufficiently remove pre-artifact to allow accurate localization of multiple tumors from the retrieved images. This paper presents a dual adaptive artifact removal method based on distance compensation to address issues of improving imaging quality. The method compensates for the attenuation effects due to magnetic wave propagation and adaptively selects the time entropy window threshold for grouped signals. The signals are then fed into an adaptive filter with variable filter parameters to minimize pre-artifact before imaging. Comparative tests are conducted to evaluate the merits of pre-artifact removal. The proposed method effectively reduces the pre-artifact for improving the overall quality of imaging and greatly enhances the accuracy of localizing multiple tumors.