Validation of modelling tools for simulating wide-angle DBT systems (original) (raw)

Medical Imaging 2019: Physics of Medical Imaging, 2019

Abstract

Full-field 2D digital mammography is used for breast cancer screening throughout the world. Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is now widely available and has shown promise as a breast cancer screening modality. Rigorous evaluation and comparison studies must be conducted before considering the new modality for routine breast cancer screening. Conventional clinical trials involving human subjects are time consuming and expensive and are limited to commercially-available system designs. Alternatively, Virtual Clinical Trials (VCTs) can be used to conduct such studies using modelling tools by simulating clinically-realistic images and experimental system designs. The OPTIMAM image simulation toolbox contains a suite of tools that can used to simulate visually and clinically realistic images for VCTs. Recently, tools for simulating a wide-angle DBT system were added to the toolbox. In this paper, we present the simulation methodology and validation results for a wide-angle DBT system. The validation was performed by simulating images of standard test objects and comparing these with real images acquired using identical settings on the simulated real system. The comparison of the contrast-to-noise ratios, geometrical distortion (z-resolution) and image blurring for real and simulated images of test objects showed good agreement. This suggests that the images of a wide-angle DBT system produced using our simulation approach are comparable to real images.

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