TY - JOUR
T1 - Theoretical comparison and optimization of cadmium telluride and gallium arsenide photon-counting detectors for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography
AU - Schaeffer, Colin
AU - Ghammraoui, Bahaa
AU - Taguchi, Katsuyuki
AU - Glick, Stephen J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).
PY - 2023/2/1
Y1 - 2023/2/1
N2 - Purpose: Most photon-counting detectors (PCDs) being developed use cadmium telluride (CdTe), which has nonoptimal characteristic x-ray emission with energies in the range used for breast imaging. New PCD using a gallium arsenide (GaAs) has been developed. Since GaAs has characteristic x-rays lower in energy than those of CdTe, it is hypothesized that this new PCD might be beneficial for spectral x-ray breast imaging. Approach: We performed simulations using realistic mammography x-ray spectra with both CdTe and GaAs PCDs. Five different experiments were conducted, each comparing the performance of CdTe and GaAs: (1) sensitivity of iodine quantification to charge cloud size and electronic noise, (2) effect of photon spectrum on iodine quantification, (3) effect of varying the number of energy bins, (4) a dose analysis to assess any possible dose reduction from using either detector, and (5) spectral performance of ideal CdTe and GaAs PCDs. For each study, 3 sets of 5000 noise realizations were used to calculate the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of iodine quantification. Results: For all spectra studied, GaAs gave a lower CRLB for iodine quantification, with 10 of the 12 spectra showing a statistically significant difference (p ≤ 0.05). The photon energy spectrum that optimized iodine detection for both detector materials was the 40 kVp beam with 2-mm Al filtration, which produced CRLBs of 0.282 cm2 and 0.257 cm2 for CdTe and GaAs, respectively, when using five energy bins. Conclusion: GaAs is a promising detector material for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography that offers better spectral performance than CdTe.
AB - Purpose: Most photon-counting detectors (PCDs) being developed use cadmium telluride (CdTe), which has nonoptimal characteristic x-ray emission with energies in the range used for breast imaging. New PCD using a gallium arsenide (GaAs) has been developed. Since GaAs has characteristic x-rays lower in energy than those of CdTe, it is hypothesized that this new PCD might be beneficial for spectral x-ray breast imaging. Approach: We performed simulations using realistic mammography x-ray spectra with both CdTe and GaAs PCDs. Five different experiments were conducted, each comparing the performance of CdTe and GaAs: (1) sensitivity of iodine quantification to charge cloud size and electronic noise, (2) effect of photon spectrum on iodine quantification, (3) effect of varying the number of energy bins, (4) a dose analysis to assess any possible dose reduction from using either detector, and (5) spectral performance of ideal CdTe and GaAs PCDs. For each study, 3 sets of 5000 noise realizations were used to calculate the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of iodine quantification. Results: For all spectra studied, GaAs gave a lower CRLB for iodine quantification, with 10 of the 12 spectra showing a statistically significant difference (p ≤ 0.05). The photon energy spectrum that optimized iodine detection for both detector materials was the 40 kVp beam with 2-mm Al filtration, which produced CRLBs of 0.282 cm2 and 0.257 cm2 for CdTe and GaAs, respectively, when using five energy bins. Conclusion: GaAs is a promising detector material for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography that offers better spectral performance than CdTe.
KW - breast-imaging
KW - photon-counting
KW - spectral
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U2 - 10.1117/1.JMI.10.S2.S22406
DO - 10.1117/1.JMI.10.S2.S22406
M3 - Article
C2 - 37056579
AN - SCOPUS:85173251326
SN - 2329-4302
VL - 10
JO - Journal of Medical Imaging
JF - Journal of Medical Imaging
M1 - S22406
ER -