Theoretical comparison and optimization of cadmium telluride and gallium arsenide photon-counting detectors for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography

Colin Schaeffer; Bahaa Ghammraoui; Katsuyuki Taguchi; Stephen J. Glick

doi:10.1117/1.JMI.10.S2.S22406

11 April 2023 Theoretical comparison and optimization of cadmium telluride and gallium arsenide photon-counting detectors for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography

Colin Schaeffer, Bahaa Ghammraoui, Katsuyuki Taguchi, Stephen J. Glick

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Medical Imaging, Vol. 10, Issue S2, S22406 (April 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.10.S2.S22406

Abstract

Purpose

Most photon-counting detectors (PCDs) being developed use cadmium telluride (CdTe), which has nonoptimal characteristic x-ray emission with energies in the range used for breast imaging. New PCD using a gallium arsenide (GaAs) has been developed. Since GaAs has characteristic x-rays lower in energy than those of CdTe, it is hypothesized that this new PCD might be beneficial for spectral x-ray breast imaging.

Approach

We performed simulations using realistic mammography x-ray spectra with both CdTe and GaAs PCDs. Five different experiments were conducted, each comparing the performance of CdTe and GaAs: (1) sensitivity of iodine quantification to charge cloud size and electronic noise, (2) effect of photon spectrum on iodine quantification, (3) effect of varying the number of energy bins, (4) a dose analysis to assess any possible dose reduction from using either detector, and (5) spectral performance of ideal CdTe and GaAs PCDs. For each study, 3 sets of 5000 noise realizations were used to calculate the Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB) of iodine quantification.

Results

For all spectra studied, GaAs gave a lower CRLB for iodine quantification, with 10 of the 12 spectra showing a statistically significant difference (p ≤ 0.05). The photon energy spectrum that optimized iodine detection for both detector materials was the 40 kVp beam with 2-mm Al filtration, which produced CRLBs of 0.282 cm² and 0.257 cm² for CdTe and GaAs, respectively, when using five energy bins.

Conclusion

GaAs is a promising detector material for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography that offers better spectral performance than CdTe.

Citation Download Citation

Colin Schaeffer, Bahaa Ghammraoui, Katsuyuki Taguchi, and Stephen J. Glick "Theoretical comparison and optimization of cadmium telluride and gallium arsenide photon-counting detectors for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography," Journal of Medical Imaging 10(S2), S22406 (11 April 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.10.S2.S22406

Received: 2 September 2022; Accepted: 21 March 2023; Published: 11 April 2023

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KEYWORDS

Gallium arsenide

Iodine

Mammography

Aluminum

X-rays

Cadmium telluride

Simulations

Purpose

Approach

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Conclusion

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