Browsing by Author "Arfelli, F."

We report the results of a systematic study of phase-contrast x-ray computed tomography in the propagation-based and analyser-based modes using specially designed phantoms and excised breast tissue samples. The study is aimed at the quantitative evaluation and subsequent optimization, with respect to detection of small tumours in breast tissue, of the effects of phase contrast and phase retrieval on key imaging parameters, such as spatial resolution, contrast-to-noise ratio, x-ray dose and a recently proposed 'intrinsic quality' characteristic which combines the image noise with the spatial resolution. We demonstrate that some of the methods evaluated in this work lead to substantial (more than 20-fold) improvement in the contrast-to-noise and intrinsic quality of the reconstructed tomographic images compared with conventional techniques, with the measured characteristics being in good agreement with the corresponding theoretical estimations. This improvement also corresponds to an approximately 400-fold reduction in the x-ray dose, compared with conventional absorption-based tomography, without a loss in the imaging quality. The results of this study confirm and quantify the significant potential benefits achievable in three-dimensional mammography using x-ray phase-contrast imaging and phase-retrieval techniques.

The aim of this study was to optimise the experimental protocol and data analysis for in-vivo breast cancer x-ray imaging. Results are presented of the experiment at the SYRMEP beamline of Elettra Synchrotron using the propagation-based phase-contrast mammographic tomography method, which incorporates not only absorption, but also x-ray phase information. In this study the images of breast tissue samples, of a size corresponding to a full human breast, with radiologically acceptable x-ray doses were obtained, and the degree of improvement of the image quality (from the diagnostic point of view) achievable using propagation-based phase-contrast image acquisition protocols with proper incorporation of x-ray phase retrieval into the reconstruction pipeline was investigated. Parameters such as the x-ray energy, sample-to-detector distance and data processing methods were tested, evaluated and optimized with respect to the estimated diagnostic value using a mastectomy sample with a malignant lesion. The results of quantitative evaluation of images were obtained by means of radiological assessment carried out by 13 experienced specialists. A comparative analysis was performed between the x-ray and the histological images of the specimen. The results of the analysis indicate that, within the investigated range of parameters, both the objective image quality characteristics and the subjective radiological scores of propagation-based phase-contrast images of breast tissues monotonically increase with the strength of phase contrast which in turn is directly proportional to the product of the radiation wavelength and the sample-to-detector distance. The outcomes of this study serve to define the practical imaging conditions and the CT reconstruction procedures appropriate for low-dose phase-contrast mammographic imaging of live patients at specially designed synchrotron beamlines.