This study, lead by previous postdoctoral fellow Shanshan Tang in TRUE lab, shows that X-ray-induced Acoustic Computed Tomography (XACT) imaging can be used for early breast un‐palpable microcalcification (μCa) detection in three dimensions (3D).
The simulation results illustrated that the proposed breast XACT system has the ability to show the μCa cluster in 3D without any tissue superposition. Meanwhile, μCa as small as 100 μm in size can be detected with high imaging contrast, high signal to noise ratio (SNR), and high contrast to noise ratio (CNR). The dose required by the proposed XACT configuration was calculated to be 0.4 mGy for a 4.5 cm‐thick compressed breast. This is one‐tenth of the dose level of a typical two‐view mammography for a breast with the same compression thickness.
The 3D breast XACT with the proposed system configuration has great potential to be applied as a low‐dose screening and diagnostic technique for early un‐palpable lesion in the breast.
Publication link: https://aapm.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mp.12829