Microwave breast screening in the time-domain: identification and compensation of measurement-induced uncertanties

In this work we examine several sources of measurement uncertainty that can hinder the use of time-domain microwave techniques for breast imaging. The effects that are investigated include those due to clock and trigger jitter, antenna movements, discrepancies in antenna fabrication, and random measurement noise. We explore the significance of the noise contribution of each effect, and present methods to mitigate them when possible and necessary. We demonstrate that, after applying the aforementioned methods, the noise is minimized to the noise floor of the system, thereby enabling successful tumor detection.