A novel cone beam breast CT scanner: preliminary system evaluation

Abstract

The clinical goal of breast imaging is to detect tumor masses when they are as small as possible, preferably less than 10 mm in diameter. Conventional screen-film mammography is the most effective tool for the early detection of breast cancer currently available. However, conventional mammography has relatively low sensitivity for the detection of small breast cancers (under several millimeters). Specificity and the positive predictive value of mammography remain limited owing to an overlap in the appearance of benign and malignant lesions, and surrounding structure. We propose to address the limitations accompanying conventional mammography by incorporating a cone beam CT reconstruction technique with a recently developed flat panel detector (FPD). We have performed a computer simulation study and preliminary phantom studies to prove the feasibility of developing an FPD-based cone beam CT breast imaging technique for a small size normal breast phantom. In this study, we report the design and construction of a novel FPD-based cone beam breast CT scanner prototype. In addition, we present the results of phantom studies performed on our current FPD-based cone beam CT scanner prototype, which uses the same flat panel detector proposed for the cone beam breast CT scanner prototype, to predict the image performance of the novel cone beam breast CT scanner, while we are completing the construction of the system.