Prof. Milica Popovic

Biography

Prof. Milica Popovic received her PhD at Norwestern University (EE, 2001). Since 2001, she has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University, where she currently holds associate professorship. Her teaching experience includes courses on electromagnetic fields, electrical measurements and antennas and propagation. Her research interests lie, in large part, in biomedical applications of electromagnetic theory. In particular, she and hear research team are striving to develop a novel breast tissue monitor based on low-power microwave emissions. The goal of this exciting work is to provide an affordable, safe and comfortable tool, which can complement current technologies used for breast cancer detection. Other research areas include: high-field MRI, body-area networks and microwave tissue properties. Prof. Popovic is a Fellow of World Innovation Foundation, a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of Professional Engineers of Ontario.

Current Projects

Low-power microwave breast cancer detection
Skin tissue properties in the microwave range
Antenna issues in body-area networks

Educational Background

B. Sc. Electrical Engineering, 1994 – University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
M. Sc. Electrical Engineering, 1997 – Northwestern University, Evanston, USA
PhD, Electrical Engineering, 2001 – Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

Professional Experience

Assistant Professor, McGill University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2001 – 2007.
Associate Professor, McGill University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2007 - present

Awards and Honours

World Innovation Foundation, Fellow, January 2003 - present

Previous Projects

Antenna design for microwave hyperthermia
Safety assessment for mobile hand-held devices (comparison of SAR for various antenna designs)
High-field magnetic resonance imaging
Light interaction with human photoreceptor cells: electromagnetic modelling
Modelling and simulation of currents densities in cardiac tissue
Safety assessment for low-power microwave breast tumor screening

Previous Students

Ph.D.

Houssam Kanj
Amir Hajiaboli
Emily Porter
Guangran (Kevin) Zhu

Masters

Qingsheng (Ted) Han
Lawrence Duong
Chinyu Chu
Zahra Al-Roubaie
Negar Tavassolian
Michael Vanderschueren
Rajib Chaowdhury
Nadine Kolment
Emily Porter
Adam Santorelli (now PhD student)

Post-docs

Simone Winkler

Publications

Journals

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, R. Kazemi, and M. Popovic, "Microwave Time-Domain Radar: Healthy Tissue Variations Over the Menstrual Cycle," IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., 2015, to be published.

E. Porter, G. Walls, Y. Zhou, M. Popovic, and J. D. Schwartz, "A Flexible Broadband Antenna and Transmission Line Network for a Wearable Microwave Breast Cancer Detection System," Prog. Electromagn. Res. Lett., vol. 49, pp. 111-118, 2014.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, and M. Popovic, "Time-Domain Microwave Radar Applied to Breast Imaging: Measurement Reliability in a Clinical Setting," Prog. Electromagn. Res., vol. 149, pp. 119-132, 2014.

A. Santorelli, E. Porter, E. Kirshin, Y. J. Liu, M. Popovic, "Investigation of Classifiers for Tumor Detection with an Experimental Time-Domain Breast Screening System," Prog. Electromagn. Res. vol. 144, pp. 45-57, 2014.

E. Porter, E. Kirshin, A. Santorelli, and M. Popovic, "Microwave Breast Screening in the Time-Domain: Identification and Compensation of Measurement-Induced Uncertainties," Progress In Electromagnetics Research B , vol. 55, pp. 115-130, 2013.

E. Porter, E. Kirshin, A. Santorelli, M. Coates, and M. Popovic, "Time-Domain Multistatic Radar System for Microwave Breast Screening,"IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 229 - 232, 2013.

E. Kirshin, B. Oreshkin, G. Zhu, M. Popovic and M. Coates, "Microwave Radar and Microwave-Induced Thermoacoustics: Dual-Modality Approach for Breast Cancer Detection," IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 354 - 360, Feb. 2013.

A. Santorelli, M. Chudzik, E. Kirshin, E. Porter, A. Lujambio, I. Arnedo, M. Popovic, and J. Schwartz, "Experimental Demonstration of Pulse Shaping for Time-Domain Microwave Breast Imaging," Progress In Electromagnetics Research, vol. 133, pp. 309 - 329, 2013.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, M. Coates, and M. Popovic, "Time-domain microwave breast cancer detection: extensive system testing with phantoms," Technol Cancer Res Treat., vol. 12, pp. 131 - 143, 2013.

Conferences

A. Santorelli, Y. Li, E. Porter, M. Popovic, and M. Coates, "Investigation of Classification Algorithms for a Prototype Microwave Breast Cancer Monitor," in Proc. 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2014), The Hague, The Netherlands, Apr. 6-11, 2014.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, and M. Popovic,"Time-Domain Microwave Radar for Breast Screening: Initial Testing with Volunteers," in Proc. 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2014), The Hague, The Netherlands, Apr. 6-11, 2014.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, and M. Popovic,"Measurement Uncertainties in Differential Radar Applied to Breast Imaging," in 2014 Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS 2014), Queenstown, New Zealand, Feb. 18-20, 2014.

E. Porter, E. Kirshin, A. Santorelli, and M. Popovic, "A Clinical Prototype for Microwave Breast Imaging Using Time-Domain Measurements," in Proc. 7th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2013), Gothenburg, Sweden, Apr. 8-12, 2013.

A. Santorelli, E. Kirshin, E. Porter, M. Popovic, and J. Schwartz, "Improved Calibration for an Experimental Time-Domain Microwave Imaging System," in Proc. 7th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2013), Gothenburg, Sweden, Apr. 8-12, 2013.

S. Winkler, E. Porter, A. Santorelli, M. Coates, and M. Popovic, "Recent Progress in Ultra-Wideband Microwave Breast Cancer Detection,"in Proc. International Conference on Ultra-wide Band 2012 (ICUWB 2012), Syracuse, NY, USA, Sept. 17-20, 2012.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, S. Winkler, M. Coates, and M. Popovic, "Time-domain microwave cancer screening: optimized pulse shaping applied to realistically shaped breast phantoms," Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), 2012 IEEE MTT-S International, Montreal, Canada, pp. 1 - 3, June 17 - 22, 2012.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, D. Coulibaly, M. Coates, and M. Popovic, "Time-domain microwave breast screening system: Testing with advanced realistic breast phantoms," in Proc. 6th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2012), Prague, Czech Republic, Mar. 26-30, 2012.

A. Santorelli, E. Porter, M. Popovic and J. Schwartz, "Pulse Shaping for Time-Domain Microwave Breast Tumour Detection: Experiments with Realistic Tissue Phantoms," in Proc. 6th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2012), Prague, Czech Republic, Mar. 26-30, 2012.

A. Santorelli, M. Popovic, "SAR distribution in microwave breast screening: Results with TWTLTLA wideband antenna," Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP), 2011 Seventh International Conference on , pp.11-16, 6-9 Dec. 2011.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, A. Bourdon, D. Coulibaly, M. Coates and M. Popovic, "Time-domain microwave breast cancer detection: experiments with comprehensive glandular phantoms," in Proc. 2011 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC 2011), Melbourne, Australia, Dec. 5-8, 2011.

A. Santorelli, M. Vander Schueren, M. Popovic, "SAR levels in microwave breast imaging: 3-D safety assessment with plane-wave illumination," Microwave Conference Proceedings (APMC), 2011 Asia-Pacific, pp.481-484, 5-8 Dec. 2011.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, M. Coates and M. Popovic, "Microwave Breast Imaging: Time-Domain Experiments on Tissue Phantoms," in Proc. 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (AP-S 2011), Spokane, Washington, July 3-8, 2011.

E. Porter, A. Santorelli, M. Coates and M. Popovic, "An experimental system for time-domain microwave breast imaging," in Proc. 5th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2011), Rome, Italy, April 11-15, 2011.

E. Kirshin, G. Zhu, M. Popovic and M. Coates, "Evaluation of the mono-static microwave radar algorithms for breast imaging," in Proc. 5th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2011), Rome, Italy, April 11-15, 2011.

E. Kirshin, B. Oreshkin, G. Zhu, M. Popovic and M. Coates, "Fusing microwave radar and microwave-induced thermoacoustics for breast cancer detection," in Proc. 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro (ISBI 2011), Chicago, U.S.A., March 30 - April 2, 2011.

E. Porter, J. Fakhoury, R. Oprisor, M. Coates and M. Popovic, "Improved tissue phantoms for experimental validation of microwave breast cancer detection," in Proc. 4th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP 2010), Barcelona, Spain, April 12-16, 2010.

G. Zhu, M. Popovic, and Q. Fang, "Microwave-induced thermoacoustics: Assisting microwave tomography", IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 1654-1657, 2009.

G. Zhu, B. Oreshkin, E. Porter, M. Coates, and M. Popovic, "Numerical breast models for commercial FDTD simulators", in Proc. European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP'09), Berlin, Germany, Mar. 2009.

H. Kanj and M. Popovic, "A novel ultra-compact broadband antenna for microwave breast tumour detection", Progress in Electromagnetics Research, vol. 86, pp. 169- 198, 2008.

H. Kanj and M. Popovic, "Microwave-range broadband "dark eyes" antenna: Detailed analysis and design", IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 4, pp. 262-265, 2005.

Theses

A. Santorelli, "Breast screening with custom-shaped pulsed microwaves," Master's Thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2012.

G. Zhu, "Application of microwave techniques in breast imaging," Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2011.

E. Porter, "Microwave breast tumor detection: simulation and design of experiments with tissue phantoms," Master's Thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2010.