MABIS: A Wearable Microwave Imaging Device for Early Breast Cancer Detection—Hardware Implementation and Preclinical Evaluation

The microwave analyzer for breast imaging scanning (MABIS) is a noninvasive, safe, and user-friendly wearable medical prototype designed for the early detection of breast lesions through microwave imaging techniques. MABIS offers a portable prototype based on a steady state, near-field radar technique in the frequency domain. Its imaging platform is based on a multistatic architecture, where a vector network analyzer (VNA) generates a continuous frequency sweep in the 2–7-GHz range, enabling the generation of 2-D coronal and 3-D breast images, and making possible the detection of breast lesions as small as 3 mm. The hardware was validated through controlled phantom experiments assessing repeatability, reproducibility, and motion robustness. Afterward, an in vivo validation was conducted in 50 patients, most of whom had already been diagnosed with breast cancer. The system demonstrated a sensitivity of 96.9% and a specificity of 82.4% on the training dataset, underscoring its potential as a complementary tool for early stage breast cancer screening. These performances are equivalent to other bulky instruments.