TITLE:
A Study of Quasi-Monochromatic X-Ray Sources for Breast Cancer Early Detection
AUTHORS:
Xin Qian, Lindsay Puckett, Zhijun Cai
KEYWORDS:
Breast Cancer, Quasi-Monochromatic, Early Detection, Digital Breast Tomosynthesis
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Medical Physics, Clinical Engineering and Radiation Oncology,
Vol.7 No.2,
May
22,
2018
ABSTRACT: Objectives: Early detection and treatment provide the opportunity to decrease the mortality rate from breast cancer. Quasi-monochromatic technique can enhance low contrast lesion detection by eliminating beam-hardening artifacts. We hypothesized that this technique would be feasible and can be used to assist in breast cancer early detection. Methods: The performance of stationary Digital Breast Tomosynthesis with quasi-monochromatic X-ray sources was evaluated using both simulated and physical phantoms. Normalized spectra in the fraction of total photons vs. photon energy were generated. Results: As expected, the peaked energies from sources, from smallest to largest, are Mo/Mo, W/Ag-1000, and W/Ce-10, W/Ce-100. For contrast vs. noise standard deviation on the simulated CIRS phantom, W/Ce-100 and W/Ce-10 have similar performance on both low and high contrast objects. For low contrast object, W/Ce-100 is barely noticeably better than W/Ce-10, and they are better than both W/Ag-1000 and Mo/Mo. For high contrast objects W/Ce-10 is slightly better than W/Ce-100. The spectra of the implemented W/Ce-10 X-ray source were measured, which matched the simulation well. The contrast noise ratios of reconstructed objects in American College of Radiology mammographic phantom with and without using W/Ce-10 combination are 7.1 and 5.4, respectively. Conclusions: The combination of stationary digital breast tomosynthesis and quasi-monochromatic technique can compensate the loss of X-ray flux due to heavy K-edge filtering. This technique can enable the stationary DBT scanners to operate at acceptable scanning times with better low contrast lesion detectability. Advances in Knowledge: The stationary digital breast tomosynthesis can provide high quality images within short scanning time by using X-ray source array, which makes quasi-monochromatic technique feasible.