A synthesizing method for signal-enhanced and artifact-reduced mammogram from digital breast tomosynthesis

In this paper, we propose a method for compositing a synthetic mammogram (SM) from digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) slice images. The method consists of four parts. The first part is image reconstruction of DBT from the acquired projection data by use of backprojection-filtration (BPF) algorithm with a low-frequency boosting scheme and a high-density object reduction technique embedded. Also, a few expectation-maximization (EM) iterations have been additively implemented on top of the BPF algorithm to prepare a separate volume image. The second is generating three kinds of intermediate SMs. A forward projection image and a linear structure weighted forward projection image were computed. A maximum intensity projection of the BPF reconstructed volume image was also generated. The third part is integrating three intermediate SMs. The last is the post-processing of the SM. We scanned two physical phantoms in a prototype DBT scanner, and we have evaluated the performance of the proposed method. We also performed a clinical data study by use of 30 patient data who went through both DBT and digital mammography (DM) scans. Three experienced radiologists have read the SMs generated by several component techniques and also read the DM of each patient, and evaluated the generated SMs. The experimental phantom study and the clinical reader study consistently demonstrated the usefulness of the proposed method.