Motion artifact seen on slot-scanning direct digital mammography

Our goal was to determine the appearance of motion artifact when imaging an anthropomorphic breast phantom using a digital slot-scanning system compared with a screen-film system.

Digital and screen-film images were obtained during both brief and continuous manually induced motion of an anthropomorphic phantom in four directions. Continuous motion was further characterized using a syringe pump to induce motion artifact.

On screen-film images, brief motion caused degradation of the entire image, simulating a double exposure. Conversely, on digital images using a slot-scanning system, brief motion caused degradation of only a small portion of the image. Continuous motion resulted in smearing of phantom details with both systems, although the smearing was more strongly influenced by the direction of motion when the slot-scanning system was used. With the slot-scanning system, motion in the direction of the detector sweep resulted in elongated distortion, whereas motion in the opposite direction resulted in foreshortening; diagonal smearing was seen with perpendicular phantom motion. The magnitude of distortion for continuous motion at a set velocity was substantially less with the slot-scanning system.

Motion artifact with a slot-scanning direct digital mammography unit differs significantly from that seen with a conventional screen-film unit and, despite a relatively long overall exposure, may prove to be less of a problem than with conventional units because any given part of an object is exposed only briefly.