Dose reduction in mammography with photon counting imaging

The purpose of this study was to investigate if the glandular dose to the breast in mammography can significantly be reduced without compromising image quality, when using photon counting technology, in a multi-slit scanning photon counting detector, compared to a conventional film mammography system and commercial available digital mammography systems with TFT-array detectors. A CDMAM phantom study, with two different thicknesses of additional PMMA absorber, 4 cm and 7 cm respectively, has shown that multi-slit scanning photon counting detector technology can reduce the dose, without reducing the image quality. This comparison was made to two commercial available digital mammography systems Senographe 2000D (from GEMS) and Selenia (from Lorad). The results show that dose can be reduced with 63% to 77%, depending on object thickness, when using XCT for mammography. This dose reduction has also been verified clinically through a small pilot study with patients and specimen, where the comparison was made between XCT and film.