Improved lesion visibility in a dedicated dual head scintimammography system - phantom results

Phantom test results are presented simulating a dedicated dual head compact gamma imaging system for scintimammography. These studies were completed with various detector prototypes constructed from pixellated scintillators coupled to various arrays of position sensitive photomultiplier tubes. A 15cm × 20cm dual-head prototype system is currently under development that will provide sufficient imaging area for breast imaging studies. The results indicate that the use of two detector heads placed on opposing sides of breast under mild compression substantially improves the lesion contrast regardless of lesion depth in the tissue (especially for small, centrally located lesions). In addition, there is significantly improved lesion signal by using a geometric mean technique, Square Root (Image 1* Image2), to combine the images from the opposing views. In count poor cases, a smoothing kernel was applied prior to image multiplication to reduce high spatial frequency noise.