Breast tomosynthesis reconstruction with a multi-beam x-ray source

As a new three-dimensional breast imaging technique, breast tomosynthesis allows the reconstruction of an arbitrary set of planes in the breast from a limited-angle series of x-ray projection images. The breast tomosynthesis technique has been demonstrated as promising to improve early breast cancer detection. This paper represents a preliminary phantom study and computer simulation results of different breast tomosynthesis reconstruction algorithms with a novel carbon nanotube based multi-beam x-ray source. Five representative tomosynthesis reconstruction algorithms, including back projection (BP), filtered back projection (FBP), matrix inversion tomosynthesis (MITS), maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM), and simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART) were investigated. Tomosynthesis projection images of a phantom were acquired with the stationary multi-beam x-ray tomosynthesis system. Reconstruction results from different algorithms were studied. A computer simulation study was further done to investigate the sharpness of reconstructed in-plane structures and to see how effective each algorithm is at removing out-of-plane blur with parallel-imaging geometries. Datasets with 9 and 25 projection images of a defined 3D spherical object were simulated with a total view angle of 50 degrees. Results showed that the multi-beam x-ray system is capable to generate 3D tomosynthesis images with faster speed compared with current commercial prototype systems. With simulated parallel-imaging geometry, MITS and FBP showed edge enhancement in-plane performance. BP, FBP and MLEM performed better at out-of-plane structure removal with larger number of projection images.