An Image Correction Method Based on Elec- Tromagnetic Simulation for Microwave In- Duced Thermo-acoustic Tomography System

In microwave induced thermo-acoustic tomography (MITAT) system, radiation of an antenna is a near field problem which gives rise to a non-uniform distribution of microwave radiation power in detection area. Due to this non-uniform distribution, the contrast of MITAT image which is proportional to the absorbed microwave energy will not reflect the real characteristics (dielectric properties) of biological tissues. In this paper, an image correction method based on electromagnetic simulation is proposed to correct the image contrast affected by the non-uniform microwave radiation distribution. First, the distribution of the microwave radiation power is simulated through a numerical simulation framework. Conventional time-reversal mirror (TRM) technique is applied to reconstruct the image. Then the microwave power distribution is applied to correct the image. The method is numerically demonstrated. The two samples with the same microwave absorption property and with different microwave absorption properties are experimentally investigated. Both numerical simulations and experimental results demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method.