A new projection correction based voting strategy for breast calcification artifact reduction

Abstract

Objective. Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) is an imaging technique that combines traditional tomography with image processing and reconstruction techniques. In screening for breast cancer, high attenuation lesion will cause calcification hardening artifacts, which reduces the reconstructed image quality and limits diagnostic accuracy. We focus on the reconstruction artifacts that are caused by high-attenuation features in DBT, and aim to propose an efficient and accurate method to remove calcification artifacts and retain calcification information. Approach. The proposed method first introduces a new segmentation method, which can segment breast calcification accurately and effectively. Then an interpolation method is used to eliminate both the calcified area and artifact area in the projection images which are then used to reconstruct the image without artifacts and calcifications. Finally, the interpolated reconstructed image and the unprocessed reconstructed image are fused under the proposed voting strategy to obtain the DBT image with calcification artifacts removal. Main results. 18 groups of simulated projection data and 10 groups of real projection data collected by us are used to evaluate the proposed method. Experimental results show that our algorithm can effectively reduce the calcification artifact and preserve the effective information in the image as well. Significance. The proposed method utilizes a novel projection correction based voting fusion strategy for image fusion, and is advanced in reducing breast calcification artifacts compared with other state-of-the-art methods. Our work paves the way for more efficient and precise DBT breast cancer screening.