Breast cancer detection using frequency modulated thermal wave imaging

ABSTRACT

Breast cancer is a significant health concern prevailing in both developing and developed countries. However, early detection of the disease receives significant attention to the medical community due to the enhanced chances of patient survival. Widely used screening modalities for the breast cancer are mammography, magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound imaging. However these techniques have limited its practicality due to various reasons such as the involved ionizing radiation, pain, annoyance caused and difficulty in interpretation of data etc. Consequently, there is a great demand for the development of convincing imaging modality to detect the tumour at an early stage. Present work highlights a novel non-contact, full-field, safe, easy to interpret and patient-friendly pulse compression favourable frequency modulated thermal wave imaging approach to detect the breast tumour at an early stage.

KEYWORDS:

• Breast cancer
• infrared thermography
• frequency domain phase images
• pulse compression
• thermal waves
• frequency modulation
• correlation images
• time domain phase images

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Geetika Dua completed her schooling at Pratap Public School, Karnal. She received her BTech degree in electronics and communication engineering from Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, and her MTech degree in electronics and communication engineering from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. She received her PhD in the field of infrared imaging from Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar. Her major areas of research interest are the development of signal, image, and video processing methods for non-destructive testing/non-invasive imaging modalities for the inspection of various industrial and biomedical materials.

Mr. Anshul Sharma is currently a Ph.D. student at C.B.M.E., Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, India. He is involved in non-destructive characterization of bio-materials specially using thermal wave imaging.

Dr. Ravibabu Mulaveesala received M.Tech from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Tiruchirapalli in 2000 and PhD from Centre for Applied Research in Electronics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), India in 2007. His research interests include thermal, acoustical and optical methods for non-invasive/non-destructive imaging technologies. He serves as editorial or advisory boards of the several refereed journals of Institute of Physics, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), Elsevier etc and also to several peer-reviewed conferences.

ORCID

Ravibabu Mulaveesala http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7351-0982