Image reconstruction considerations in molecular breast imaging tomosynthesis

Molecular breast imaging tomosynthesis (MBIT) provides 3D functional images of the breast. However, due to the asymmetrical and undersampled nature of the image acquisition process, artifacts may arise in the plane of the slices as well as in the orthogonal direction. In this paper, we explore image reconstruction parameters for MBIT using parallel-hole collimation and maximum likelihood expectation maximization in term of artifact reduction and resolution recovery. Phantom studies were performed to evaluate the effectiveness of different reconstruction schemes using clinically realistic acquisition parameters.