Anatomical complexity in breast parenchyma and its implications for optimal breast imaging strategies

Chen, Lin; Abbey, Craig K.; Nosratieh, Anita; Lindfors, Karen K.; Boone, John M.

doi:10.1118/1.3685462

Cited by 68 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…10(b)] has the potential to contribute to the anatomical complexity of the individual tomosynthesis images, and this is fundamentally due to the considerable extent of the SSP in tomosynthesis. The consequences of this have been demonstrated by quantitative measures of the anatomical noise in the breast, 11 where the anatomical noise metric (β) between tomosynthesis and mammography was equal, while that of breast CT was significantly different.…”

Section: Iiib Breast Ct Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Brass disks ranging in diameter from 2.5 to 20 mm, similar to the size of glandular densities found within the breast in the (x, y) plane 11 were sandwiched between adipose-equivalent mammography slabs and used to measure SSP. The narrowing of SSP as angular acquisition range increases is well known, however, to date a comprehensive empirical analysis spanning from 15…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Glandular structures of these dimensions are prevalent in the dense breast and correspond approximately to spatial frequencies ranging from 0.17 to 0.25 cycles/mm. 11 The implication of Fig. 4 is that the limited angle nature of tomosynthesis does not completely remove anatomical noise due to superpositioning-indeed, the contrast generated by a 3 mm diameter spherical glandular island in an otherwise adipose background spans 80% of the thickness of a 50 mm thick breast (i.e., 40/50 mm).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Comprehensive assessment of the slice sensitivity profiles in breast tomosynthesis and breast CT

et al. 2012

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose: This study experimentally evaluated the slice sensitivity profile (SSP) and its relationship between acquisition angle, object size, and cone angle. The sensitivity profile metric was used to characterize a breast tomosynthesis system's resolution in the z-axis. The SSP was also measured on a prototype breast computed tomography (bCT) system. Methods: The SSP was measured using brass disks placed within adipose tissue-equivalent breast phantoms. The digital tomosynthesis system (Selenia Dimensions, Hologic Corporation, Bedford, MA) acquires projection images over a 15• angular range and the bCT scanner acquires projection images over a 360• angular range. Angular ranges between 15• and 360• were studied by using a subset of the projection images acquired on the bCT scanner. The SSP was determined by measuring a background-corrected mean gray scale value as a function of the z-position (axis normal to the plane of the detector). Results:The results show that SSP improves when the angular acquisition range is increased and the SSP approaches a delta function for angles greater than 180• . Smaller objects have a narrower SSP and the SSP is not significantly dependent on the cone angle. For a 2.5, 5, 10 mm disk, the full width at half maximum of the SSP was 35, 61, 115 mm, respectively, on the tomosynthesis system (at 15• ) and was 0.5 mm for all disk diameters on the bCT scanner (at 360• ). Conclusions:The SSP is dependent on object size and angular acquisition range. These dependencies are overcome once the angular acquisition range is increased beyond 180• .

show abstract

Section: Iiib Breast Ct Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Comprehensive assessment of the slice sensitivity profiles in breast tomosynthesis and breast CT

et al. 2012

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…26 A recent clinical study has also shown that breast CT has a significantly lower anatomical noise than mammography and breast tomosynthesis, providing the ultimate solution to eliminate the anatomical noise induced by overlap of the breast tissue. 33 Therefore, with the help of the dedicated breast CT, it is possible to accurately characterize the chemical composition of a lesion in terms of water, lipid, and protein contents. [34][35][36][37] The proposed three-compartment measurement may be used in addition to diagnostic mammography to improve the positive predictive value in malignant tumor detection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measurement of breast tissue composition with dual energy cone‐beam computed tomography: A postmortem study

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose:To investigate the feasibility of a three-material compositional measurement of water, lipid, and protein content of breast tissue with dual kVp cone-beam computed tomography (CT) for diagnostic purposes. Methods: Simulations were performed on a flat panel-based computed tomography system with a dual kVp technique in order to guide the selection of experimental acquisition parameters. The expected errors induced by using the proposed calibration materials were also estimated by simulation. Twenty pairs of postmortem breast samples were imaged with a flat-panel based dual kVp cone-beam CT system, followed by image-based material decomposition using calibration data obtained from a three-material phantom consisting of water, vegetable oil, and polyoxymethylene plastic. The tissue samples were then chemically decomposed into their respective water, lipid, and protein contents after imaging to allow direct comparison with data from dual energy decomposition. Results: Guided by results from simulation, the beam energies for the dual kVp cone-beam CT system were selected to be 50 and 120 kVp with the mean glandular dose divided equally between each exposure. The simulation also suggested that the use of polyoxymethylene as the calibration material for the measurement of pure protein may introduce an error of −11.0%. However, the tissue decomposition experiments, which employed a calibration phantom made out of water, oil, and polyoxymethylene, exhibited strong correlation with data from the chemical analysis. The average root-mean-square percentage error for water, lipid, and protein contents was 3.58% as compared with chemical analysis. Conclusions:The results of this study suggest that the water, lipid, and protein contents can be accurately measured using dual kVp cone-beam CT. The tissue compositional information may improve the sensitivity and specificity for breast cancer diagnosis.

show abstract

“…[32][33][34][35][36][37][38] Although the detection tasks will be application specific, the overall system performance can be characterized by combining the MTF, NPS, and signal nature into the generalized spatial-frequency-dependent noise equivalent quanta (NEQ). Recently, theoretical investigations with numerical simulations have been performed to study the NEQ of an idealized DPC-CT system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fundamental relationship between the noise properties of grating-based differential phase contrast CT and absorption CT: Theoretical framework using a cascaded system model and experimental validation

Bevins

Zambelli

et al. 2013

Med. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose: Using a grating interferometer, a conventional x-ray cone beam computed tomography (CT) data acquisition system can be used to simultaneously generate both conventional absorption CT (ACT) and differential phase contrast CT (DPC-CT) images from a single data acquisition. Since the two CT images were extracted from the same set of x-ray projections, it is expected that intrinsic relationships exist between the noise properties of the two contrast mechanisms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these relationships. Methods: First, a theoretical framework was developed using a cascaded system model analysis to investigate the relationship between the noise power spectra (NPS) of DPC-CT and ACT. Based on the derived analytical expressions of the NPS, the relationship between the spatial-frequencydependent noise equivalent quanta (NEQ) of DPC-CT and ACT was derived. From these fundamental relationships, the NPS and NEQ of the DPC-CT system can be derived from the corresponding ACT system or vice versa. To validate these theoretical relationships, a benchtop cone beam DPC-CT/ACT system was used to experimentally measure the modulation transfer function (MTF) and NPS of both DPC-CT and ACT. The measured three-dimensional (3D) MTF and NPS were then combined to generate the corresponding 3D NEQ. Results: Two fundamental relationships have been theoretically derived and experimentally validated for the NPS and NEQ of DPC-CT and ACT: (1) the 3D NPS of DPC-CT is quantitatively related to the corresponding 3D NPS of ACT by an inplane-only spatial-frequency-dependent factor 1/f 2 , the ratio of window functions applied to DPC-CT and ACT, and a numerical factor C g determined by the geometry and efficiency of the grating interferometer. Note that the frequency-dependent factor is independent of the frequency component f z perpendicular to the axial plane. (2) The 3D NEQ of DPC-CT is related to the corresponding 3D NEQ of ACT by an f 2 scaling factor and numerical factors that depend on both the attenuation and refraction properties of the image object, as well as C g and the MTF of the grating interferometer. Conclusions: The performance of a DPC-CT system is intrinsically related to the corresponding ACT system. As long as the NPS and NEQ of an ACT system is known, the corresponding NPS and NEQ of the DPC-CT system can be readily estimated using additional characteristics of the grating interferometer.

show abstract

Anatomical complexity in breast parenchyma and its implications for optimal breast imaging strategies

Cited by 68 publications

References 25 publications

Comprehensive assessment of the slice sensitivity profiles in breast tomosynthesis and breast CT

Comprehensive assessment of the slice sensitivity profiles in breast tomosynthesis and breast CT

Measurement of breast tissue composition with dual energy cone‐beam computed tomography: A postmortem study

Fundamental relationship between the noise properties of grating-based differential phase contrast CT and absorption CT: Theoretical framework using a cascaded system model and experimental validation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About