Paper
2 March 2012 A fast scatter field estimator for digital breast tomosynthesis
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is a promising alternative approach to overcome the limitations of tissue superposition found in full-field 2D digital mammography. However, due to the absence of anti-scatter grids in DBT, accurate scatter estimation for each projection is necessary for modelling the image reconstruction stage. In this work we identify the limitations associated with scatter estimation using spatial invariant scatter kernels, in particular at the edge region where such methods result in scatter overestimation. Such approaches show an overestimation of scatter-to-primary ratio of over 50% at the edges when compared with results from direct Monte Carlo simulation. This problem was found to increase with projection angle. Simulation work presented here shows that this overestimation in scatter is largely due to air gap between the lower curved breast edge and the detector. We propose a new fast, accurate scatter field estimator for use in DBT which not only considers the breast thickness and primary incidence angle, but also accounts for scatter exiting the breast edge region and traversing an air gap prior to absorption in the detector. The new proposed scatter estimator represents an alternative approach to this problem which reduces discrepancies at the edge of a breast phantom. Moreover, the time required for generating scatter has dropped from approximately 12 hours using Monte Carlo simulations for 1010 photons to just a few minutes per projection. The insertion of scatter from the compression paddle to aforementioned methodologies is also discussed.
© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Oliver Díaz, David R. Dance, Kenneth C. Young, Premkumar Elangovan, Predrag R. Bakic, and Kevin Wells "A fast scatter field estimator for digital breast tomosynthesis", Proc. SPIE 8313, Medical Imaging 2012: Physics of Medical Imaging, 831305 (2 March 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.911494
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Cited by 11 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Breast

Digital breast tomosynthesis

Monte Carlo methods

Sensors

Error analysis

Convolution

Silver

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