A second pass correction method for calcification artifacts in digital breast tomosynthesis

Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) allows a quasi-3D reconstruction of the breast with high in-plane and poor depth resolution by the principles of limited angle tomography. The limited angular range and the coarse angular sampling result in prominent streak artifacts arising from high-contrast structures such as calcifications. These artifacts do not only degrade the image quality but also hold the risk of overlaying suspicious tissue structure in neighbouring slices, which might therefore be overlooked. This work presents a second pass method for correcting these kinds of high-contrast streak artifacts. In a first pass reconstruction the candidate highcontrast calcifications are segmented and subtracted from the original projection data to generate a subsequent artifact-free second pass reconstruction. The method is demonstrated in a simulation study using software breast phantoms, which have been derived from segmented MRI data.