2014 IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 28 - 30 November 2014, Penang, Malaysia

Compressed Sensing Based Nearfield

Electromagnetic Imaging
Muhammad Naveed Tabassum, Ibrahim Elshafiey, Mubashir Alam
Department of Electrical Engineering
King Saud University
Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
mtabassum@ksu.edu.sa, ishafiey@ksu.edu.sa, mubalam@ksu.edu.sa
AbstractThis paper proposes a novel method of nearfield
electromagnetic imaging using compressed sensing technique.
Orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) reconstruction algorithm is
implemented for reconstruction of the target space. A dictionary
is tested considering head imaging of single and multiple brain
tumor targets. The received scattered time-domain signals are
captured using spatial compressed sensing and later interpolated
for full target space. These signals are also processed for
temporal compressed sensing using background subtraction.
Simulation of the forward problem it is conducted using CST
Microwave Studio using frequency range of 300-3000 megahertz.
The quality of reconstructed images reveals the potential of the
proposed method.
Index TermsNearfield imaging, electromagnetic imaging,
brain tumor imaging, temporal compressed sensing, spatial
compressed sensing.

I. INTRODUCTION
Electromagnetic imaging (EMI) using RF and microwave
ranges is an attractive research topic in various disciplines
including civilian, military, industrial, and biomedical fields.
Application examples of EMI comprise non-destructive
evaluation, remote sensing, and biomedical diagnosis and
imaging [1-4]. For example, by employing simple and
inexpensive systems, and using non-ionizing fields, EMI
provide more attractive tools compared to other biomedical
imaging modalities such as x-ray, CAT scan or MRI. The
contrast in dielectric properties for cancerous and healthy body
tissues have been used for tumor localization in applications
such as breast imaging [2-4]. However, hitherto EMI of human
head has proven to be more challenging [5]. The higher
conductivity values for the brain tissues compared to that for
breast tissues is also a reason for limited efforts in building a
complete system for head imaging.
This work aims at enhancing biomedical head imaging for
identifying brain tumor using compressed sensing based
nearfield EMI. Therefore, the key objectives of head imaging
here are to detect the presence and location of the brain tumor
using both temporal and spatial compressed sensing using
wideband excitation signals. Consequently, the imaging system
consists of an applicator antenna array, a data collection system,
and a post processing system that is used to analyze and invert
the collected data to reconstruct required images.

978-1-4799-5686-9/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

571

Efficient nearfield RF and microwave imaging requires

exorbitant data collection. Indeed, data collection for different
wideband frequencies results in large amounts of scattered data
that is to be collected using a large number of transmitter and
receiver locations. This complex process is a major problem for
the wideband nearfield RF and microwave imaging. Moreover,
the interaction between the antenna array elements and
biological tissues in nearfield makes the investigation more
complex, since farfield approximations will be invalid.
Furthermore, large attenuation is encountered due to the
biological tissues, which results in highly weak received
scattered signals at the sensors. Additionally, the difference in
distance from sensors for different possible tumor locations is
also extremely small, and this results in highly correlated
acquired signals. Advanced preprocessing analysis is necessary
to extract useful information from these weak and highly
correlated signals.
In this paper, compressed sensing (CS) is implemented in
combination with background and reflection subtraction to
overcome discussed challenges. Compressed sensing is an
attractive emerging technique for data collection. The CS
algorithm allows the accurate recovery of signals and images,
and other data from what appear to be highly sub-Nyquist-rate
samples [6, 7]. The CS makes use of signal sparsity in
spectrum as described in [8]. Here temporal CS analysis is
performed along with spatial interpolation. The adopted
framework achieves reconstruction from fewer temporal
samples (as compared to reconstructed image size),
considering various possible tumor locations. CS technique
provides thus considerable savings in required data acquisition
time.
This paper is organized as follows. The detection of brain
tumor by forward problem formulation and capturing of
received signals using human head and antenna array is
discussed in Section II. Dictionary creation for target space,
which will be used for compressed sensing (CS) based
reconstruction is illustrated in Section III. The CS based
inverse problem solution and the inversion results are presented
in Section IV and V respectively. Lastly, the paper is
concluded in Section VI.

2014 IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 28 - 30 November 2014, Penang, Malaysia

TABLE I. DIELECTRIC PROPERTTIES FOR HUMAN HEAD MODEL AND

II. DETECTION OF BRAIN TUM

MOR

TUM
MOR

Advanced computational and electrromagnetic (EM)

simulation is implemented to formulate thee forward problem
for the detection of brain tumor as described next. The analysis
is performed using CST Microwave Studio MWS package,
which provides solvers in time domain and frequency domain
of 3D EM simulation [9].

Dielectrric
Constannt

Tissue Type

Electric
Conductivity

Density

(S/m)

(kg/m)

A. Human Head Model with Antenna Array

A simple human head phantom model iss implemented for
the computational analysis. The model conntains two layered
cylindrical structures, where the inner cyylinder represents
average brain tissue with a radius of 85 millimeter,
m
and the
outer cylinder represents the skull and haas a radius of 90
millimeter [10], as shown in Fig. 1. The diielectric properties
used in the computations for human head moodel and tumor are
listed in Table I, which are assigned accordding to the values
reported in the literature for frequency of 915 megahertz [10,
11].
Horn antenna is used for the transmission of
electromagnetic (EM) signals. The structurre of the horn is
given in [12]. The operational range of wideband
w
RF and
microwave frequencies is selected from 3000-3000 megahertz.
This wideband frequency range providees a compromise
between penetration for the EM signals andd the resolution of
the reconstructed images. The applicator anteenna array consists
of four elements around the human head, ass shown in Fig. 1.
Figure 2 shows a typical Gaussian input signnal that covers the
required frequency band, and is used for elem
ment excitation.

Average Brain
Tissue

38.8377

0.595

1030

Skull

16.5988

0.244

1850

Tumor

63.2599

1.21

1043

Fig. 2. Input excitation signall for elements of antenna array.

B. Raw Received Time-domain Signals

The scattered time-domaain signals are received and
recorded, at each element of the
t antenna array. The received
signals can roughly be identifieed by four components as shown
in Fig. 3: the coupled signall from transmitter elements of
antenna array, the reflected siggnal from skull and brain layers,
reflections for the tumor anomaaly and the clutter [13].
Layers Reflections
Clutters

Coupling

Fig. 1. Human head model with tumor and antennaa array (top view).

Tumor Reflections

Fig. 3. Received scattered signal at antenna array element.

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2014 IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 28 - 30 November 2014, Penang, Malaysia

number of samples or meassurements [6, 7]. The central

principles underlying CS are spparsity and incoherence [6]. The
target space to be reconstructedd here is sparse, which makes CS
application valid.
f a given dictionary MN,
The CS theory proves that for
the CS recovery algorithm cann reconstruct the K-sparse target
space x N1, which maps the tumor distribution from a
relatively limited number of meeasurements vector bM1 by:

III. DICTIONARY CREATION

N
Electromagnetic imaging (EMI) problem is formulated here
as a dictionary selection problem. Thereforee, the dictionary is
created by discretizing the target space. Consequently,
C
the
discretization results in a finite set of posssible tumor target
positions = {1, 2, .. , N}, where N is
i the target space
resolution and each position i is a 3D locattion [xi, yi, zi]. For
all processing examples, zi is fixed and is the same for all N.
A. Temporal Compressed Sensing
Preprocessing is performed on the receiveed signal shown in
Fig. 3, for the subtraction of background andd other reflections.
resulting in the signal shown in Fig. 4. It waas found that there
are approximately only 25% of samples, which
w
carry useful
information. Considering the signal to be described by samples for each element of the antenna arraay, only the useful
samples are selected for the analysis, givingg rise to temporal
compressed sensing. This results in signaal with -samples
(=0.25) for each element. This preprocessing is repeated for
all L elements of the antenna array to syynthesize a single
observation signal described by M samples ass:
M

, , , L

(2)

Where M1 represents the amount of noise. Although the

system is ill-posed and underdeetermined, the prior information
of signal sparsity, x N1 caan be implemented to perfectly
reconstruct the target space, wiith high probability, via properly
designed recovery algorithm. The
T Mutual Incoherence Property
(MIP) is a widely used framew
work for the CS recovery [14].
This requires the mutual incoheerence of the dictionary to be as
small as possible. The mutual incoherence of the dictionary
is defined as:

(1)

maxx

(3)

Where i and j denote the ith and jth column of the dictionary,
respectively.
Different CS recovery algorithms are available. Among
them, the greedy search algoritthm receives significant interest
for practical usage. As a canonical method in his family, the
OMP algorithm has receivedd special attention due to its
simplicity and competitive recoonstruction performance. In fact,
it has been shown that the OMP
O
algorithm is reliable for
reconstructing both sparse andd near-sparse signals [15]. OMP
algorithm is therefore implemennted in this paper for the inverse
problem solution, and the OMP
P resulting images are compared
to those for standard back-projeection (SBP) technique. In OMP
the column, which has the maximum
m
correlation with the
current residuals at each step is selected [16].

Where T indicates transpose operation.

V. SIMULATTION RESULTS
Fig. 4. Received signal after background and other reflections subtraction.

B. Spatial Compressed Sensing

The signal synthesizing described in Eq. 1 is done for only
10% of the total N discrete spatial locations that are selected
randomly in the from the target space. Lineear interpolation is
implemented to evaluate the data for the rest of the target space,
o
signals
resulting in full dictionary MN with N observation
for full target space each described by M sam
mples. This spatial
compressed sensing saves considerable tiime for the data
collection. The resultant dictionary is thenn tested in inverse
problem image reconstruction of the target sppace.
IV. COMPRESSED SENSING BASED INVERSION
N
Compressed sensing (CS) has been widelyy used in numerous
applications to recover signals and imagges using limited

573

The simulations are perforrmed for a single and multiple

tumors of different shapes and
a
sizes to test the proposed
algorithm, as shown in Fig. 5aa and 5b, respectively. The test
tumor target is a combination of
o the 1-millimeter point targets.
The measurements vector b is a superposition of the
observation signals, since it is
i assumed here that the point
targets at discrete spatial positiions do not interact, making the
superposition valid.
The reconstructed images corresponding to single and
multiple tumors using stanndard back-projection (SBP)
technique are shown in Fig. 6a and 6b, respectively. Moreover,
compressed sensing (CS) recoonstruction results by the OMP
algorithm are shown in Fig. 7a
7 and 7b, respectively. All the
images are normalized to their own maxima and are shown on
a logarithmic 40-dB scale. The results show that reconstruction
with CS techniques provides suuperior images compared to SBP,
in terms of resolution and accurracy.

2014 IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 28 - 30 November 2014, Penang, Malaysia

(a)

(b)

Fig. 5. Target space with (a) sinngle and (b) multiple tumors of different shapes and sizes. Images usse a 40-dB scale.

(a)

(b)

i
for (a) single tumor and (b) multiple tumors. Images use a 400-dB scale.
Fig. 6. SBP reconstructed images

(a)

(b)

Fig. 7. CS reconstruction for (a) single tumor and (b) multiple tumors. Images use a 40-dB
B scale.

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2014 IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 28 - 30 November 2014, Penang, Malaysia

VI. CONCLUSIONS
A novel method of nearfield EMI is proposed and tested for
the detection of tumors in the brain. A phantom of the human
head is simulated in the forward problem, assuming the use of
four-element antenna array to transmit electromagnetic signals
and to record the received scattered time-domain signals. A
dictionary is created, implementing both spatial and temporal
compressed sensing (CS)
The images for the target space with single and multiple
tumors of different shapes and sizes are reconstructed
successfully. The inverse problem implements the OMP
algorithm, and the results are much better than those
reconstructed using SBP techniques. This shows the validity of
the proposed algorithm. However, the reconstruction appears to
provide the skeleton of the tumor shape, rather than the shape
itself. Image processing can be used to enhance the quality of
reconstructed images.

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

[10]

This research work is partially supported by the National

Plan for Science and Technology at KACST, Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia, under project number: 10-ELE996-02. The
authors also acknowledge the support of the College of
Engineering Research Center and the Deanship of Scientific
Research at King Saud University in carrying out this research
work.

[11]

[12]

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