• Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars

November 19, 2024 2:00 PM - November 19, 2024 3:00 PM

Host:

Dinesh Loomba

Presenter:

Dr. Paul Schwoebel (UNM)

Roughly 1 in 8 women in the US will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. The 5-year relative survival rate for breast cancer diagnosed at a localized stage is 99%. Hence, early detection is key and the medical community generally recommends that women 40 to 74 years old and at average risk for breast cancer get a mammogram every 2 years. Conventional mammography is a breast cancer screening technique that has been the standard of care for 50 years and involves two radiographs of the breast. Over the last 10 years Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) has been shown to have increased sensitivity and specificity for early cancer detection relative to conventional mammography and has thus begun to become the new standard of care in the US and Europe. DBT uses a limited-angle scan of the breast to produce a series of radiographs which are then reconstructed to make a quasi-three dimensional image.

I will discuss the research we are doing to significantly improve image quality in DBT by enhancing the capabilities of the X-ray source. These enhancements focus on the development of a two-dimensional electrically addressable array of X-ray sources in order to: 1) Reduce the under-sampling inherent with the one-dimensional scan geometry used in commercial DBT systems; and 2) Eliminate mechanical motion of the X-ray source in order to reduce the scan time to < 1s and thereby minimize image blur and artifacts due to source and/or patient motion.