Electromagnetically characterized gelatinous-based phantoms for breast microwave imaging

The present work proposes a procedure based on a modified recipe to fabricate electromagnetically characterized phantoms, made of gelatinous-based mixture. As a main advantage we highlight the use of commercially available and very inexpensive gelatin along with the addition of food colorants for the phantom assembly. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that by storing the samples in a refrigerator at a stable temperature of 4°C, the phantoms maintain stable dielectric properties up to 14 days. Their dielectric properties have been measured in the [1-8.5] GHz frequency range using a coaxial probe kit. The promising results demonstrate the potential of the recipe method to realize multistrate breast phantoms representing different tissues.