Image performance of a new amorphous selenium flat panel x-ray detector designed for digital breast tomosynthesis

The purpose of this work is to report the performance of an amorphous selenium (a-Se) based flat-panel x-ray imager under development for application in digital breast tomosynthesis. This detector is designed to perform both in the conventional Full Field Digital Mammography (FFDM) mode and the tomosynthesis mode. The large area 24 x 29 cm detector achieves rapid image acquisition rates of up to 4 frames per second with minimal trapped charge induced effects such as ghost or lag images of previously acquired objects. In this work, a new a-Se/TFT detector layer structure is evaluated. The design uses a top conductive layer in direct contact with the a-Se x-ray detection layer. The simple structure has few layers and minimal hole and electron trapping effects. Prototype detectors were built to investigate the basic image performance of this new a-Se/TFT detector. Image signal generation, image ghosting, image lag, and detector DQE were studied. For digital mammography applications, the residual image ghosting was less than 1% at 30 seconds elapsed time. DQE, measured at a field of 5.15 V/um, showed significantly higher values over previously reported data, especially at low exposure levels. For digital breast tomosynthesis, the image lag at dynamic readout rate was < 0.6 % at 0.5-second elapsed time. A prototype tomosynthesis system is being developed utilizing this new a-Se/TFT detector.