3D optical mammography of the uncompressed breast

We have successfully performed optical mammography of the uncompressed breast on 52 volunteers with breast lesions. Our approach provides a great deal of prior structural information which in this paper we begin to exploit. We segment the image to identify the breast boundary and then reconstruct the absolute optical properties which forms a starting estimate for a subsequent reconstruction. In simulation studies, the localisation error is reduced by a third and, for the first time, we achieve quantitatively accurate images. © 2007 Optical Society of America.