X-ray stereotactic lesion localization in conjunction with dedicated scintimammography

We are developing a dual modality system that combines digital X-ray mammography with gamma emission scintigraphy, on an upright mammography gantry in which the breast is held under mild compression by a support structure that is independent of the detectors. The X-ray source and detectors can be rotated around a fixed rotation axis permitting multiple views of the breast with fixed compression. Two such views can be combined as a stereotactic pair to obtain the three-dimensional location of breast lesions. Information about the location of the lesion within the breast permits corrections for attenuation and detector spatial resolution, resulting in more accurate estimation of the true lesion-to-background concentration ratio, based on the image lesion-to-background counts ratio. In this paper, we describe the model used to make these corrections, and present the results of phantom experiments designed to test the accuracy of our calculations.