3D biopsy for tomosynthesis: Simulation of prior information based reconstruction for dose and artifact reduction
Accurately targeting of small lesions for success is crucial in breast biopsy. In this paper, we proposed a new 3D tomobased biopsy, which is characterized in being more accurate, easier to perform, lower in dose, and free of metal artifact. In the scout phase, a conventional tomosynthesis scan is performed, and the reconstructed 3D image is then used for radiologists to accurately localize target volume and determine optimized needle path. In the prefire phase, two prefire stereotactic images are obtained at +24° and -24° angular levels for retrieving needle and shifted lesion locations. By combining the reconstructed 3D tomosynthesis image, needle location and lesion location, synthetic prefire and postfire images are generated for radiologists' reference before firing the real needle. The proposed scheme not only improves the biopsy accuracy but also reduces dose by 3.7-5.6 times compared to conventional mammo-based stereotactic biopsy. A simulation using anthropomorphic phantom was conducted to verify our method. Both needle and lesion were precisely recovered just based on two tomo angled images. For the needle registration, the sum of translation discrepancy is less than 3 pixels, and the sum of rotation discrepancy is less than 3 degrees. For the lesion registration, the sum of coordinate discrepancy is less than 4 pixels. The predicted 3D prefire and postfire images exhibited more intuitive spatial relationship of the shifted lesion and biopsy needle tip than mammo-based stereotactic biopsy. © 2012 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).
