We propose and implement three-dimensional (3-D) ring-scanning equipment for near-infrared (NIR) diffuse optical imaging to screen breast tumors under prostrating examination. This equipment has the function of the radial, circular, and vertical motion without compression of breast tissue, thereby achieving 3-D scanning; furthermore, a flexible combination of illumination and detection can be configured for the required resolution. Especially, a rotation-sliding-and-moving mechanism was designed for the guidance of source-and detectionchannel motion. Prior to machining and construction of the system, a synthesized image reconstruction was simulated to show the feasibility of this 3-D NIR ring-scanning equipment; finally, this equipment is verified by performing phantom experiments. Rather than the fixed configuration, this addressed screening/diagnosing equipment has the flexibilities of optical-channel expansion for spatial resolution and the dimensional freedom for scanning in reconstructing optical-property images. Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 08/17/2015 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx d DC, direct current NIR; FD, frequency domain (or amplitude modulated) NIR; TD, time domain (or pulsed) NIR. Optical Engineering 073107-2 July 2015 • Vol. 54(7) Yu et al.: Design and implementation of three-dimensional ring-scanning equipment for optimized. . . Downloaded From: http://opticalengineering.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 08/17/2015 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx

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We demonstrate a working prototype of an optical breast imaging system involving parallel-plate architecture and a dual-direction scanning scheme designed in combination with a mammography machine; this system was validated in a pilot study to demonstrate its application in imaging healthy and malignant breasts in a clinical environment. The components and modules of the self-developed imaging system are demonstrated and explained, including its measuring architecture, scanning mechanism, and system calibration, and the reconstruction algorithm is presented. Additionally, the evaluation of feature indices that succinctly demonstrate the corresponding transmission measurements may provide insight into the existence of malignant tissue. Moreover, five cases are presented including one subject without disease (a control measure), one benign case, one suspected case, one invasive ductal carcinoma, and one positive case without follow-up treatment. A region-of-interest analysis demonstrated significant differences in absorption between healthy and malignant breasts, revealing the average contrast between the abnormalities and background tissue to exceed 1.4. Except for ringing artifacts, the average scattering property of the structure densities was 0.65–0.85 mm−1.