Advanced Illumination Tank with Super-hydrophilic Metal Boundary in Microwave Tomography System

Jang-Yeol Kim, Jonghyeon Jeong, Kwang-Jae Lee, Seong-Ho Son, Soon-Ik Jeon, Woonbong Hwang

This article presents the advanced illumination tank structure of a microwave tomography system for breast cancer detection. The proposed tank has been implemented with a super-hydrophilic aluminum sheet to realize the upper boundary conditions of the perfect electric conductor with no air gap. In contrast, the previous tank had an air gap layer between the human chest and the matching liquid. A comparison of the results shows that the air gap causes the strong pathing of the transmitted signal when measured near the liquid surface. In the proposed tank, the super-hydrophilic property of micro-to-nano hierarchical structures naturally prevents the forming of air bubbles on the surface, and the shielding property of the aluminum sheet provides stable measurement free from outside interference.