Premium
TU‐CD‐207‐02: Quantification of Breast Lesion Compositions Using Low‐Dose Spectral Mammography: A Feasibility Study
Author(s) -
Cho H,
Ding H,
Sennung D,
Kumar N,
Molloi S
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.4925621
Subject(s) - imaging phantom , mammography , materials science , calibration , biomedical engineering , optics , detector , nuclear medicine , lesion , medicine , physics , breast cancer , pathology , cancer , quantum mechanics
Purpose: To investigate the feasibility of measuring breast lesion composition with spectral mammography using physical phantoms and bovine tissue. Methods: Phantom images were acquired with a spectral mammography system with a silicon‐strip based photon‐counting detector. Plastic water and adipose‐equivalent phantoms were used to calibrate the system for dual‐energy material decomposition. The calibration phantom was constructed in range of 2–8 cm thickness and water densities in the range of 0% to 100%. A non‐linear rational fitting function was used to calibrate the imaging system. The phantom studies were performed with uniform background phantom and non‐uniform background phantom. The breast lesion phantoms (2 cm in diameter and 0.5 cm in thickness) were made with water densities ranging from 0 to 100%. The lesion phantoms were placed in different positions and depths on the phantoms to investigate the accuracy of the measurement under various conditions. The plastic water content of the lesion was measured by subtracting the total decomposed plastic water signal from a surrounding 2.5 mm thick border outside the lesion. In addition, bovine tissue samples composed of 80 % lean were imaged as background for the simulated lesion phantoms. Results: The thickness of measured and known water contents was compared. The rootmean‐square (RMS) errors in water thickness measurements were 0.01 cm for the uniform background phantom, 0.04 cm for non‐uniform background phantom, and 0.03 cm for 80% lean bovine tissue background. Conclusion: The results indicate that the proposed technique using spectral mammography can be used to accurately characterize breast lesion compositions.