Title: Differential Microwave Imaging for Advanced Clinical Applications
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Abstract: Microwave Imaging (MI) has gained a great deal of attention among researchers over the past decade, mainly due to its potential use in breast cancer imaging. MI is seen as a safe, portable and low-cost alternative to existing imaging modalities. Due to the breast tissue properties at microwave frequencies, MI benefits from significantly higher contrast than other techniques. The great excitement about MI radar system is that, using a multi-static real aperture technique and sophisticated signal processing, it has sufficient resolution to be clinically useful and is far better than simple wavelength assumptions would estimate. Whilst to date MI has been mainly proposed for breast cancer detection, some recent reports have also speculated a use of MI in extremities imaging, diagnostics of lung cancer, brain imaging and cardiac imaging. Despite the interest in Microwave Imaging among researchers, it has not moved far beyond numerical simulations and very simple experimental works without clinical realisation. Bristol is among two research groups in the world who have clinical experience with Microwave Imaging.Compared with other medical imaging techniques, microwave imaging is still in its infancy. One historical reason for this might due to the fact that most microwave systems-devices originated in military applications, radar being an obvious example. In recent years however, due to the mobile/wireless revolution, we have witnessed unprecedented progress in high performance microwave hardware as well as computing power. This opens up a unique opportunity for development of microwave imaging systems The goal of this Career Acceleration Fellowship project is to explore a novel direction in MI, Differential Microwave Imaging (DMI), in clinical applications reaching far beyond breast cancer detection. In Differential Microwave Imaging, the goal is to image temporal changes in tissue, and not the tissue itself. This somewhat limits usability of DMI as an imaging technique on one hand, but at the same time it opens up totally new applications where standard Microwave Imaging could not be applied. The idea of DMI came from the discovery during world's first clinical trial of microwave radar imaging system in Bristol in 2009. During the clinical trials it was realised that the Microwave Imaging system was extremely sensitive to any changes occurring during the scan. Following this up it was then discovered that the local change in tissue properties can easily be detected and precisely located. Moreover, it was shown that this change in local properties of tissues can even be detected in very dense and heterogeneous breast tissues. The project will focus on two applications, serving as Proof of Principle:1. Nanoparticle contrast-enhanced DMI for cancer detection The proposed work on 3D detection of nanoparticles is of great interest to researchers working in the cancer imaging field. DMI could find applications not only in cancer detection, but it could also be used to find and evaluate the effectiveness of new cancer biomarkers, track nanoparticle-labelled cells or monitor delivery of nanoparticles for hyperthermia treatment. 2. Functional brain imaging using DMI radar systemDMI, as a general method, is also a promising concept for functional brain imaging. Development of the DMI system for functional brain imaging is timely related to current research activities in neuroscience. Functional imaging is used to diagnose metabolic diseases and lesions (such as Alzheimer's disease or epilepsy) and also for neurological and cognitive psychology research. This novel interdisciplinary project connects the fields of electronic engineering, nanotechnology and medical physics. The proposed research project addresses one of the EPSRC strategic priorities: Towards next generation healthcare. High calibre of clinical collaborators will ensure that research outcomes are relevant to end users.


Research activity codes: 4.1 DISCOVERY AND PRECLINICAL TESTING OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Health categories: NEUROLOGICAL;CANCER AND NEOPLASMS