Digital breast tomosynthesis reconstruction with an adaptive voxel grid

摘要

In digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) volume datasets are typically reconstructed with an anisotropic voxel size, where the in-plane voxel size usually reflects the detector pixel size (e.g., 0.1 mm), and the slice separation is generally between 0.5-1.0 mm. Increasing the tomographic angle is expected to give better 3D image quality; however, the slice spacing in the reconstruction should be reduced, otherwise one may risk losing fine-scale image detail (e.g., small microcalcifications). An alternative strategy consists of reconstructing on an adaptive voxel grid, where the voxel height at each location is adapted based on the backprojected data at this location, with the goal to improve image quality for microcalcifications. In this paper we present an approach for generating such an adaptive voxel grid. This approach is based on an initial reconstruction step that is performed at a finer slice-spacing combined with a selection of an "optimal" height for each voxel. This initial step is followed by a (potentially iterative) reconstruction acting now on the adaptive grid only.