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Improvement of three-material decomposition in spectral mammography with a photon-counting detector

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Abstract

The accurate analysis of breast imaging is important because it has been reported that an increase in breast density of only 1% results in a 2% increase in the relative risk of breast cancer. The proteins, water, and lipids that determine breast density are important biomarkers in the diagnosis of breast cancer. In mammography, photon-counting detectors (PCDs) with energy-discrimination capabilities can cause errors in the measurement of chemical composition when the attenuation coefficient is small. This is typically the case with proteins, water, and lipids because of the low photon efficiency in each bin. In this study, a dual-energy technique for PCDs was developed based on a non-local means denoising technique for accurate material decomposition and the quantification of protein, water, and lipid content. To evaluate the proposed material decomposition algorithm, spectral images were acquired with a modeled PCD using the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE) version 6.0. Linear, quadratic, and rational models were used for three-material decomposition based on the spectral images acquired using the PCD. The proposed algorithm yielded the best results for the estimation of breast density, composed of three materials. It was determined that the developed approach improved the accuracy of three-material decomposition using a PCD with energy-discrimination capabilities. The presented material decomposition algorithm has the potential to improve the diagnostic accuracy of breast cancer detection based on the quantitative measurement of breast density using PCDs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2020R1F1A1075741) and Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2021R1I1A1A01059875) and Korea Medical Device Development Fund grant funded by the Korea government (the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Health & Welfare, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) (Project Number: 1711137897, KMDF_PR_20200901_0014) and Technology Innovation Program (20014111, Development of a mobile hybrid CT system based on an ultra-low dose (140 \(\times\) 140 μm2) imaging solution of 25mGy or less) Funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE, Korea) and Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) and the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE) of the Republic of Korea (G032579811).

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  1. Department of Radiation Convergence Engineering, Yonsei University, 1 Yonseidae-gil, Wonju, 26493, Republic of Korea

    Minjae Lee

  2. Department of Radiation Oncology, Wonju Severance Christian Hospital, Yonsei University Wonju College of Medicine, Wonju, Republic of Korea

    Hyemi Kim

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  1. Minjae Lee
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Correspondence to Hyemi Kim.

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Lee, M., Kim, H. Improvement of three-material decomposition in spectral mammography with a photon-counting detector. J. Korean Phys. Soc. 81, 91–100 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40042-022-00500-3

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