Limit of Detection in X-ray Diffraction Measurements of Tissue Equivalent Samples

[摘要] There is a suggestion of a new approach to mammography whereby following a conventional mammogram, the radiologist could interrogate suspicious regions using X-ray diffraction whilst the patient is still present and to establish the true extent of disease. A starting point for this work is to quantify the minimum detectable amount of breast cancer within a realistic thickness phantom. Perspex has a similar diffraction pattern to healthy breast tissue whilst water is similar to breast tumour, hence these two materials are used as tissue equivalent test objects for X-ray diffraction measurements. The preliminary results show linear agreement between the ratio of Perspex to water and the ratio of the diffraction peak intensities at 0.7 nm-1and 1.5 nm-1. The minimum detectable limit for a component of the two 'tissue' mix was found to be 4.1%. This suggests that X-ray diffraction can be used to quantify tissue like mixtures down to the 4.1% / 95.9% mix level and hence has a strong potential for delineating the extent of infiltration disease.

[发布机构] Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London; WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom^1;Diagnostic Radiology and Radiation Protection, Christie Medical Physics and Engineering, Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester; M20 4BX, United Kingdom^2;Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London; WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom^3

[效力级别] 医药卫生 [学科分类] 卫生学

[关键词] Breast tissues;Breast tumour;Diffraction peaks;Extent of disease;Limit of detection;Minimum detectable limits;New approaches;X-ray diffraction measurements