The design of mammary gland tumor phantom for microwave radiometers

摘要

Microwave Radiometry is the spectral measurement technique of resolving electromagnetic radiation of all matters which temperature is above absolute zero. This technique utilized the electromagnetic noise field generated by a thermal volume similar to a mechanism existing in biological tissues. One particular application of Microwave Radiometry is for analyzing temperature differentials of inside of human body to detect and diagnose some crucial pathologic conditions. For general evaluation of radiometer, we propose a new mammary gland tumor phantom simulating heat diffusion propagated by tissues around tumors. Theoretical researches of human tumors revealed the fact that temperature distribution of tissues around tumor formed a gaussian statistics. To comply with this physiological property, we built a tumor imitator composed of two parts, pseudo-tumor and thermo-anomaly, and observed the temperature distribution of tumor imitator inside a phantom. Our experimental results showed that the thermal properties of tumor imitator well agreed with heat transfer properties of a real tumor.