Investigating possible improvements in image quality with energy-weighting photon-counting breast CT

In an effort to improve the early stage detection and diagnosis of breast cancer, a number of research groups have been investigating the use of x-ray computerized tomography (CT) systems dedicated for use in imaging the breast. For a number of reasons, the performance of energy integrating detectors are sub-optimal for use in CT imaging of the breast. It is expected that the next generation of x-ray detectors for digital radiography and CT will have the capability of counting individually measured photons and recording their energy. In this paper, we used computer simulations to evaluate improvements in image quality that can be attained using energy weighting photon counting detectors for breast CT and a lower kVp settings. Results from this study suggest that improvements in SNR performance can be attained with photon counting detectors as compared to energy integrating detectors.

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