The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to imaging systems, and more particularly to systems and methods for x-ray breast imaging.
Mammography is an x-ray imaging modality used to scan breasts for screening, diagnosis and management. The effectiveness of mammography is affected by numerous factors, including radiation scatter, noise and overlapping anatomical structures due to conventional techniques of x-ray projection imaging.
Dedicated systems are known for breast imaging. For example, a digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) or mammography-tomography (mammo-tomo) system is a dedicated mammography system that acquires several (e.g., tens of) angularly offset projection images and reconstructs three-dimensional (3D) image datasets, which can have reduced anatomical overlap. However, although these conventional DBT systems may partially overcome the limitations of standard mammography systems, DBT systems still have limited depth resolution. Additionally, associated artifacts and scatter are still issues when using the DBT systems.