In-silico study of the impact of system design parameters on microcalcification detection in wide-angle digital breast tomosynthesis.
J Med Imaging (Bellingham)
; 12(Suppl 1): S13002, 2025 Jan.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39055550
ABSTRACT
Purpose:
Accurate detection of microcalcifications ( µ Calcs ) is crucial for the early detection of breast cancer. Some clinical studies have indicated that digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) systems with a wide angular range have inferior µ Calc detectability compared with those with a narrow angular range. This study aims to (1) provide guidance for optimizing wide-angle (WA) DBT for improving µ Calcs detectability and (2) prioritize key optimization factors.Approach:
An in-silico DBT pipeline was constructed to evaluate µ Calc detectability of a WA DBT system under various imaging conditions focal spot motion (FSM), angular dose distribution (ADS), detector pixel pitch, and detector electronic noise (EN). Images were simulated using a digital anthropomorphic breast phantom inserted with 120 µ m µ Calc clusters. Evaluation metrics included the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the filtered channel observer and the area under the receiver operator curve (AUC) of multiple-reader multiple-case analysis.Results:
Results showed that FSM degraded µ Calcs sharpness and decreased the SNR and AUC by 5.2% and 1.8%, respectively. Non-uniform ADS increased the SNR by 62.8% and the AUC by 10.2% for filtered backprojection reconstruction with a typical clinical filter setting. When EN decreased from 2000 to 200 electrons, the SNR and AUC increased by 21.6% and 5.0%, respectively. Decreasing the detector pixel pitch from 85 to 50 µ m improved the SNR and AUC by 55.6% and 7.5%, respectively. The combined improvement of a 50 µ m pixel pitch and EN200 was 89.2% in the SNR and 12.8% in the AUC.Conclusions:
Based on the magnitude of impact, the priority for enhancing µ Calc detectability in WA DBT is as follows (1) utilizing detectors with a small pixel pitch and low EN level, (2) allocating a higher dose to central projections, and (3) reducing FSM. The results from this study can potentially provide guidance for DBT system optimization in the future.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
En
Journal:
J Med Imaging (Bellingham)
Year:
2025
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
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