DUAL ENERGY MAMMOGRAPHY:  EVALUATION OF SCINTILLATORS FOR X-RAY DETECTORS USING A SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO MODEL

Adrianos Toutountzis^a,b, Nikolaos Stathonikos^a, Giorgos Fountos^a,
Giorgos Nikiforidis^b, Ioannis Kandarakis^a

^a Department Medical Instruments Technology, Technological Educational Institution of Athens,
Ag. Spyridonos, Aigaleo, 122 10 Athens, Greece
^bDepartment of of Medical Physics, Medical School, University of Patras, 265 00 Patras, Greece
·        Corresponding author: kandarakis@teiath.gr

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to perform an analysis on microcalcification visualization in dual energy subtraction mammography. A theoretical model was applied in order to evaluate the signal to noise ratio on subtracted mammographic images. The detector performance is investigated and compared for two different scintillators; the commercially used GdOS:Tb, and LSO:Ce. In addition, the estimation of signal and noise levels is performed for different tissue compositions and various x ray spectra. The image parameters were selected for the optimization of a dual energy subtraction technique for the improved detection and visualization of microcalcifications.  The results are presented and the dependence on image parameters is discussed.