Development of low-dose photon-counting contrast-enhanced tomosynthesis with spectral imaging.

Purpose: To demonstrate the feasibility of low-dose photon-counting tomosynthesis in combination with a contrast agent (contrast material-enhanced tomographic mammography) for the differentiation of breast cancer.

Materials And Methods: All studies were approved by the institutional review board, and all patients provided written informed consent. A phantom model with wells of iodinated contrast material (3 mg of iodine per milliliter) 1, 2, 5, 10, and 15 mm in diameter was assessed.

Contrast-enhanced spectral mammography with a photon-counting detector.

Purpose: Spectral imaging is a method in medical x-ray imaging to extract information about the object constituents by the material-specific energy dependence of x-ray attenuation. The authors have investigated a photon-counting spectral imaging system with two energy bins for contrast-enhanced mammography. System optimization and the potential benefit compared to conventional non-energy-resolved absorption imaging was studied.

Phase-based multidimensional volume registration.

We present a method for accurate image registration and motion compensation in multidimensional signals, such as two-dimensional (2-D) X-ray images and three-dimensional (3-D) computed tomography/magnetic resonance imaging volumes. The method is based on phase from quadrature filters, which makes it robust to noise and temporal intensity variations. The method is equally applicable to signals of two, three or higher number of dimensions.