Microwave imaging has been proposed for breast health assessment. The majority of the images of human subjects that have been previously reported focus on tumor detection capabilities. There is a need to correlate additional features of microwave images to clinical information in order to increase confidence in this approach. In this contribution, we present an initial exploration of the connection between the dielectric properties obtained from microwave images and breast density estimates that are readily available from mammography reports.

We investigate the use of ultrasound images as prior structural information (also known as ultrasound spatial priors) to guide microwave breast imaging so as to enhance its achievable complex permittivity images. In the main approach considered herein, the edges within the discretized ultrasound compressibility image are fed as spatial priors into a microwave imaging algorithm. It is shown that this method requires minimal post-processing of the ultrasound image and can enhance the achievable microwave image accuracy. It is also demonstrated that small tumours can still go undetected in microwave breast imaging using this method if their edges are missing from the spatial priors.