Breast tomography with synchrotron radiation

A feasibility study of breast CT with synchrotron radiation is currently being carried on at Elettra, the Trieste synchrotron radiation facility. Breast CT cannot be implemented easily with conventional radiographic tubes, due to the high dose that would be delivered to the breast by a polychromatic X-ray spectrum. The possibility of tuning the beam energy, available at a synchrotron radiation beamline, allows a significant reduction in the delivered dose, and at the same time the use of monochromatic beams avoids beam hardening artifacts on the reconstructed image. Images of in vitro breast tissue samples have been acquired by means of a high efficiency linear array detector coupled to a VLSI single photon counting readout electronics. The pixel width, determining the pixel size of the reconstructed image, is 200 micrometers , while the pixel height, determining the CT slice thickness, is 300 micrometers . Tomograms have been reconstructed by means of standard filtered backprojection algorithms. Images of normal and pathologic breast tissue samples show a good visibility of glandular structure. The delivered dose was in all cases comparable to the one delivered in clinical planar mammography. Due to the promising results we obtained, in vivo studies are under evaluation