Application of Delay-and-Multiply Algorithm to Microwave Breast Cancer Detection

Currently, confocal microwave imaging algorithms for breast cancer detection mainly include delay and sum algorithm (DAS), and coincidence factor delay multiplication and sum algorithm (CF-DAS). However, these algorithms have obvious weaknesses, including more clutter, and lower resolution making them difficult to use for clinical breast cancer screening. The paper introduces a confocal-based delay-and-multiply (DAM) imaging algorithm. The DAM algorithm time-shifts the scattered signal and multiplies it to obtain a synthetic focus. Where the multiplication step suppresses the generation of clutter in the image and improves the contrast and signal to noise ratio of the image. The DAM algorithm improves the signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) by 4 dB compared to CF-DAS and DAS. The results show that our proposed algorithm imaging results have less clutter.