Evaluation of carbon fibre 3d printed skin and tumour analogues for microwave breast system phantoms
| dc.contributor.author | Ede, Ezekiel | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Burgess, Jacob (Physics and Astronomy) Rickey, Daniel (Physics and Astronomy) | en_US |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Pistorius, Stephen (Physics and Astronomy) | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-11-17T16:38:32Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-11-17T16:38:32Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2020-10-27 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2020-10-27 | en_US |
| dc.date.submitted | 2020-10-27T17:06:00Z | en_US |
| dc.degree.discipline | Physics and Astronomy | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Science (M.Sc.) | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Phantoms for breast microwave imaging (BMI) can be grouped into three categories: shell-based phantoms, solid phantoms, and gel phantoms. While each type of phantom has advantages and disadvantages, only shell-based phantoms can be morphologically accurate. However, shell-based phantoms require the use of shells, typically made of low-permittivity plastics, introducing additional dielectric boundary layers, which can result in artefacts in the reconstructed signals of the phantom. With the advent of 3D-printing technology, the rapid development of shell-based phantoms was made possible. These 3D-printed breast shells can be obtained from breast MRI images, resulting in phantoms that reflect the actual morphology of the breast tissues. A thorough evaluation of BMI systems using phantoms that represent the population is required before these systems are suitable for clinical deployment. This work will describe the development of 3Dprintable models from breast MRI images, and the viability of carbon fibre (CF) doped plastics as tissue-mimicking shells will also be presented. The 𝑆11 and 𝑆21 measurements over 2 8 GHz of 3D printed CF-doped materials will be compared to those from pure plastic PLA and measurements performed using excised pigskin. The complex permittivity of CF-doped plastic will be compared with those of plastic PLA and dry skin found in the literature. The results from the reflection measurements indicate that the CF-doped plastics produce 𝑆11 responses that were similar to those from pigskin over most of the 2-8 GHz frequency band. This suggests that CF-doped plastic might be capable of reflecting microwaves in the 2-8 GHz range, similar to those from human skin. The measured reflection coefficient from CF-PLA was significantly higher than those from pure plastics PLA (polylactic acid) but slightly lower than those from pigskin. The dielectric measurements show that the permittivity of the CF-doped plastic is higher than the permittivity of pure plastics but lower than those from dry skin, as published in the literature. The polarization property of the carbon fibres could enable the optimal reflection to be obtained during the breast system scans by adjusting the antenna(s) geometry. | en_US |
| dc.description.note | February 2021 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/35139 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | 3D Breast Phantom | en_US |
| dc.subject | Skin and tumour analogues | en_US |
| dc.subject | Carbon fibre | en_US |
| dc.title | Evaluation of carbon fibre 3d printed skin and tumour analogues for microwave breast system phantoms | en_US |
| dc.type | master thesis | en_US |