Speaker
Description
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Early diagnosis is a crucial point to achieve an efficient therapy.
In order to identify small-size tumours at the early stage, mammography is the most used technique for screening having showed to be able to decrease mortality from the breast cancer.
Nevertheless it showed reduced performance in case of dense breast [1].
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Ultrasound (US) and Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI) techniques have been proposed as complementary to mammography.
The most promising among them is the MBI based on dedicated gamma camera, which provides functional, specific, information, particularly appropriated to dense breast.
It showed better sensitivity and specificity than mammography in case of dense breast.
A new compact system, consisting of a two asymmetric (different geometries and collimations) detectors, has been developed [2].
The two detector heads face each other in anti-parallel viewing direction, compressing, appropriately, the breast between them and allowing Limited-Angle Tomography.
The detectors provide somehow complementary planar images that shall be properly combined (fused) to get enhanced, diagnostic information with high specificity and sensitivity.
A full scale prototype based on matrices of Position Sensitive Photo-Multiplier Tube (PSPMT), coupled to segmented NaI(Tl) scintillators with parallel and pin holes optics has been constructed to test different design solutions, and evaluate the expected performances.
We will present the results of the measurements, in different modalities, including the Limited-Angle Tomography, with 99mTc on a rather complex perspex phantom simulating a woman breast with up to four spheric tumour lesions of different sizes, positions and uptakes.
First results on performance will be reported.
[1] Hruska C. et al., Medical Physics, June 2012, 39(6)
[2] Garibaldi F. et al., Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 617, 2010, 227–229
