Comparison of full-scan and half-scan for cone beam breast CT imaging

The half-scan cone beam technique, requiring a scan for 180° plus detector width only, can help achieve both shorter scan time as well as higher exposure in each individual projection image. This purpose of this paper is to investigate whether half-scan cone beam CT technique can provide acceptable images for clinical application. The half-scan cone beam reconstruction algorithm uses modified Parker's weighting function and reconstructs from slightly more than half of the projection views for full-scan, giving out promising results. A rotation phantom, stationary gantry bench top system was built to conduct experiments to evaluate half-scan cone beam breast CT technique. A post-mastectomy breast specimen, a stack of lunch meat slices embedded with various sizes of calcifications and a polycarbonate phantom inserted with glandular and adipose tissue equivalents are imaged and reconstructed for comparison study. A subset of full-scan projection images of a mastectomy specimen were extracted and used as the half-scan projection data for reconstruction. The results show half-scan reconstruction algorithm for cone beam breast CT images does not significantly degrade image quality when compared with the images of same or even half the radiation dose level. Our results are encouraging, emphasizing the potential advantages in the use of half-scan technique for cone beam breast imaging.