Potential of a Compton camera for high performance scintimammography

In this paper, we present a novel approach to scintimammography that is based on the Compton camera principle. We analyze the performance of our scheme using Monte Carlo simulations. In particular, we evaluate the detection efficiency, spatial resolution, and lesion visibility of the system. The preliminary simulation results show that the proposed technique achieves an absolute detection efficiency of 0.03 and a FWHM resolution of 3.6 mm at 141 keV photon energy. Furthermore, our approach shows high potential in lesion detection. With total collected counts of 1.35 million, equivalent to 25s acquisition time for a concentration level of 100 nCi/cc in breast tissue, and tumor-to-background ratio of 8:1, our system can clearly reveal an 8 mm diameter tumor that is located in the medial aspect of a 500 cc breast phantom. We also investigate the contribution of scatter and direct radiation from adjacent organs. We find that the background contribution of liver to the right breast is 30% at 141 keV, which can be reduced to 4.8% with shielding.