Hybrid Microwave Medical Imaging Approach Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Algorithms

This letter proposes a hybrid microwave medical imaging (MMI) approach to reconstruct the inner structure of the human body with improved accuracy on mapping the dielectric permittivities. Specifically, the results of the quantitative and qualitative MMI are employed to act as the a priori information for each other through an iterative process. Hence, the hybrid MMI approach combines the advantages from both the quantitative and qualitative algorithms to visualize simultaneously the inner body structure with clear tissue boundaries and the positions of strong scatterers. This proposed approach is evaluated by considering the medical scenario of bone fracture detection. The resultant image shows that the relative error of the reconstructed permittivity can drop by 33% for the scanned body area when compared to the one generated by the conventional quantitative MMI, whereas the position of a bone fracture can still be precisely indicated.