부산대학교 도서관

We have developed a new 3D forward solution for use in microwave tomography based on the discrete dipole approximation (DDA). Given that the forward problem at each iteration is the primary computational load, heavy emphasis has been placed on reducing this cost by the research community. Some of the more advanced approaches include techniques such as finite difference time domain; but even these can require multiple hours to complete even using advanced hardware such as GPU's and parallel processors. The DDA is infrequently used in the microwave modeling setting because once metallic scatterers are introduced, the number of dipoles needed increases substantially and negates the computational gain. However, because of our approach's low profile antennas and highly lossy coupling medium, the non-transmitting antennas barely impact propagation allowing for an efficient DDA implementation. The gains using this technique are impressive with full 3D clinical reconstructions taking under 10 minutes using a Matlab code operating on a 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 processor.