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Materials and Methods: The prototype system consists of a mono-block x-ray source, a flat panel detector, a slip ring for signal transmission, a servo motor and a rotating gantry. The relative positions and angles of x-ray source and detector are carefully designed to ensure a large FOV with almost zero dead space on the chest side. The slip ring is used to accommodate a breast stretching device designed to stretch the breast length to match the same imaging volume size as in a prone gesture. Results: The designed prototype system has a size of 1950mm, 1200mm, and 660mm in height, length and width, respectively. On the Catphan®600 phantom, the acquired CBBCT images have an average CT number error of less than 0.5% and an image non-uniformity of 0.19%. An in-house water phantom with inserted thin tungsten wires is designed to evaluate the system capability on imaging small calcifications. The results show that our system successfully images small high-contrast objects with a diameter of 30 μm. Conclusion: We have developed a prototype upright CBBCT system with a compact size, a high imaging accuracy and spatial resolution. |
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Breast
Prototyping
Mammography
Sensors
Imaging systems
Chest
Spatial resolution
