Investigation of Phase Singularity Problem in Microwave Breast Tomography

This paper investigates the phase singularity problem in microwave image reconstruction utilizing unwrapped phase data. The measured phases of the electric fields in most microwave measurement systems are wrapped. Thus, a certain phase unwrapping process is necessary for reconstruction of the image of a high contrast object. This unwrapping, however, is difficult in the presence of scattering nulls on/near the unwrapping path. At the null point, the phase value will be rendered, resulting in a poor image reconstruction. In this paper, we investigate the phase singularity arising from electromagnetic scattering nulls in microwave breast tomographic imaging. We then propose a transformation technique for the measured electric fields that avoids phase singularity.