IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2022 Nov;41(11):2980-2990. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2022.3175924. Epub 2022 Oct 27.
Breast microcalcifications are an important primary radiological indicator of breast cancer. However, microcalcification classification and diagnosis may be still challenging for radiologists due to limitations of the standard 2D mammography technique, including spatial and contrast resolution. In this study, we propose an approach to improve the detection of microcalcifications in propagation-based phase-contrast X-ray computed tomography of breast tissues. Five fresh mastectomies containing microcalcifications were scanned at different X-ray energies and radiation doses using synchrotron radiation. Both bright-field (i.e. conventional phase-retrieved images) and dark-field images were extracted from the same data sets using different image processing methods. A quantitative analysis was performed in terms of visibility and contrast-to-noise ratio of microcalcifications. The results show that while the signal-to-noise and the contrast-to-noise ratios are lower, the visibility of the microcalcifications is more than two times higher in the dark-field images compared to the bright-field images. Dark-field images have also provided more accurate information about the size and shape of the microcalcifications.
乳腺微钙化是乳腺癌的一个重要的主要放射学指标。然而，由于标准二维乳腺 X 线摄影技术的局限性，包括空间分辨率和对比度分辨率，乳腺微钙化的分类和诊断仍然对放射科医生具有挑战性。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种方法，以提高基于传播的乳腺组织相衬 X 射线计算机断层扫描中微钙化的检测。使用同步辐射对五例包含微钙化的新鲜乳房切除术进行了不同 X 射线能量和辐射剂量的扫描。使用不同的图像处理方法从同一数据集提取明场（即传统相位重建图像）和暗场图像。根据微钙化的可见度和对比度噪声比进行了定量分析。结果表明，虽然信号噪声比和对比度噪声比较低，但与明场图像相比，暗场图像中微钙化的可见度提高了两倍以上。暗场图像还提供了关于微钙化的大小和形状的更准确信息。
