Heterogeneous Skin Phantoms for Experimental Validation of Microwave-Based Diagnostic Tools

Considerable exploration has been done in recent years to exploit the reported inherent dielectric contrast between healthy and malignant tissues for a range of medical applications. In particular, microwave technologies have been investigated towards new diagnostic medical tools. To assess the performance and detection capabilities of such systems, tissue-mimicking phantoms are designed for controlled laboratory experiments. We here report phantoms developed to dielectrically represent malign skin lesions such as liposarcoma and nonsyndromic multiple basal cell carcinoma. Further, in order to provide a range of anatomically realistic scenarios, and provide meaningful comparison between different phantoms, cancer-mimicking lesions are inserted into two different types of skin phantoms with varying tumor–skin geometries. These configurations were measured with a microwave dielectric probe (0.5–26.5 GHz), yielding insight into factors that could affect the performance of diagnostic and detection tools.