Phase contrast digital mammography using molybdenum x-ray: clinical implications in detectability improvement

Full-field Digital Phase-contrast Mammography

“…Ishisaka et al (2000) presented a new method of analyzing the edge effect in phase-contrast imaging with incoherent Xrays from conventional X-ray tubes for medical use. Based on theoretical analysis, Honda et al (2002) succeeded in developing phase-contrast mammography using a conventional molybdenum anode tube with a 100 gm focal spot and conventional high-speed mammography S/F systems with the object placed 1.0 m away from the X-ray tube . Freedman et al (2003) reported improvement of detectability in ACR RMI 156 phantom images by using the phase-contrast technique in digital mammography with a customized mammography unit that had a molybdenum anode tube with a 100 gm focal spot, where the distance between the focal spot and the object was 0.60 m. In these studies, the fundamentals of phase techniques were established for clinical mammography.…”

“…In digital mammography, the magnified image in phasecontrast imaging can be reduced to the original size of the object. It is reported that this technique allows the utilization of phase contrast and magnification in FFDM (Freedman et al, 2003).…”

X-Ray Phase Imaging for Breast Cancer Detection

“…As current breast imaging (mammography and breast tomosynthesis) employs exclusively low x-ray tube voltages (25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40), our strategy is to utilize the phase contrast extracted out with the phase retrievals to compensate for the attenuation-contrast loss associated with the use of high tube-voltages, thereby achieving significant radiation doses reduction. We images the phantoms with different geometric configurations including the settings with magnification factors of 1, 2, 2.5, 3.…”

“…A longer distance than typical clinical mammography values was utilized to target future applications, as this configuration has been used for preliminary studies in inline phase contrast x-ray imaging indicating the potential to reduce the dose in mammography without negatively affecting the detection capability [7,[35][36][37][38][39]. In addition, the air gap in this configuration provides a comparable amount of scatter rejection and resultant image quality improvement as the grid used in clinical systems [6,40,41]. The object was simulated by a BR12 phantom (Model 014A, CIRS, Norfolk, Virginia, USA) with a thickness of 5 cm.…”

“…(3) in Section 1. Since Teague proposed the TIE algorithm for phase retrieval in 1983 [21], numerous phase retrieval algorithms have been suggested on how to effectively search the numerical solution of the TIE [4, 20, 25, 37, 38, 39,40]. Among the methods of solving the above TIE for the phase map, the one based on Fast Fourier Transform, proposed by Nugent et al [4], and Allen and Oxley in [25], is the most widely used.…”