Preliminary study on a high-resolution breast CT: Development of experimental system and its evaluation

Abstract

Breast X-ray computed tomography(breast CT)has been developed in some research groups to overcome the limitations of mammography. However, the spatial resolution of the existing system is not sufficient to identify microcalcifications within the breast. The purpose of this study was to develop a prototype of high-resolution breast CT system, and to evaluate the developed system. Our prototype system consists of a micro-focus X-ray tube and a flat panel detector; a spatial resolution of 20µm is attained. In the experiments, we evaluated physical properties and image quality. As a result, a resolution of proposed system was better than conventional CT system used in clinical practice. As for evaluation of image quality using a breast phantom, mass lesion and microcalcifications within the phantom were clearly confirmed in 3-dimensions.