Comparison of Lesion Extent and Contrast-Agent Uptake in Breast Tomosynthesis versus Cone-Beam Breast CT

摘要

This study compares the quantitative potential of cone-beam dedicated breast CT (bCT) and digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) for contrast-enhanced (CE) imaging in the assessment of 3D lesion extent and iodinated contrast-agent uptake. bCT and DBT topologies were modeled assuming perfect energy-integrating detectors. Projection images were simulated using optimized spectra for iodine imaging and primary photons only. Lesion extent and lesion-to-background-contrast were measured in reconstructed images of breast tissue equivalent phantoms containing iodinated lesions. Lesion extent was estimated using an automatic estimator. A full factorial experiment was used to evaluate the effect of 3D lesion dimension, position and iodine concentration on measurement precision. Preliminary results show that for CE-DBT and CE-bCT, precision is similar in the in-plane direction, while CE-bCT is superior in the depth direction. Lesion-to-background-contrast greatly depends on lesion diameter in CE-DBT and is almost independent of lesion diameter for CE-bCT.