Portable Microwave Head Imaging Device using Low-Cost VNA

This paper presents a low-cost prototype of a portable, non-invasive, and easy-to-operate microwave brain imaging device for potential applications in the diagnosis and continuous bedside monitoring of hemorrhagic brain stroke patients. The state-of-the-art in microwave imaging systems for brain stroke detection rely on the use of laboratory grade vector network analyzer (VNA) which enhance the cost of hardware thus limiting the usefulness of such systems in under-developed countries and low-income population. Our proposed hardware setup is based on a very low-cost commercially available compact VNA and does not require coupling medium or calibration of antennas at each scan. The proposed procedure has been validated through realistic full-wave electromagnetic simulations and hardware measurements on in-house anthropomorphic human head phantoms. The radar-based image reconstruction algorithm has been able to detect stroke mimicking inclusion of size up to 1mm in simulations and up to 10 mm in hardware measurements.