A Quantification Method for Breast Tissue Thickness and Iodine Concentration Using Photon-Counting Detector

The purpose of contrast-enhanced digital mammography (CEDM) is to facilitate detection and characterization of the lesions in the breast using intravenous injection of an iodinated contrast agent. CEDM produces iodine images with gray levels proportional to iodine concentration at each pixel, which can be considered as quantification of iodine. While dual-energy CEDM requires an accurate knowledge of the thickness of compressed breast for the quantification, it is known that the accuracy of the built-in thickness measurement is not satisfactory. Triple-energy CEDM, which can provide a third image, can alleviate the limitation of dual-energy CEDM. If triple exposure technique is applied, it can lead to increased risk of motion artifact. An energy-resolving photon-counting detector (PCD) that can acquire multispectral X-ray images can reduce the risk of motion artifact. In this research, an easily implementable method for iodine quantification in breast imaging was suggested, and it was applied to the images of breast phantom with various iodine concentrations. The iodine concentrations in breast phantom simulate lesions filled with different iodine concentrations in the breast. The result shows that the proposed method can quantify the iodine concentrations in breast phantom accurately.