Examenspresentation för Emelie Björkman

Examinator:  Andreas Fhager
Opponents: Anna von Sydow and Emelie Svensson

Abstract:
Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer worldwide, affecting mostly women but men as well. The survival rates have increased dramatically over the last 50 years, primarily due to early detection protocols and enhanced treatment options. However, today's screening techniques consisting mainly of x-ray mammography is both uncomfortable/painful and contains harmful radiation. Depending on the breast type, it is also common with both false positives and fully omitted small tumours. Reconstruction using microwave tomography is a promising alternative, but is computationally heavy requiring large amounts of time and expensive hardware.

In this thesis, an approach using a discrete dipole approximation (DDA) has been evaluated and compared to results from electromagnetic simulations in COMSOL as well as results from a finite-difference time-domain method. The suggested DDA method for reconstruction is a continuation of work conducted at Chalmers in collaboration with Dartmouth. The initial results are positive, indicating good detection for small objects and objects with higher dielectric properties than the background material, which are exactly those objects omitted with traditional screening.

Welcome!

Emelie and Andreas