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European Radiology
Published in: European Radiology 9/2018

01-09-2018 | Breast

Diagnosis of breast cancer based on microcalcifications using grating-based phase contrast CT

Authors: Xinbin Li, Hewei Gao, Zhiqiang Chen, Li Zhang, Xiaohua Zhu, Shengping Wang, Weijun Peng

Published in: European Radiology | Issue 9/2018

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Abstract

Objectives

Microcalcifications are an important feature in the diagnosis of breast cancer, especially in the early stages. In this paper, a CT-based method is proposed to potentially distinguish benign and malignant breast diseases based on the distributions of microcalcifications using grating-based phase-contrast imaging on a conventional X-ray tube.

Methods

The method presented based on the ratio of dark-field signals to attenuation signals in CT images is compared with the existing method based on the ratio in projections, and the threshold for the classification of microcalcifications in the two types of breast diseases is obtained using our approach. The experiment was operated on paraffin-fixed specimens that originated from 20 female patients ranging from 27–65 years old.

Results

Compared with the method based on projection images (AUC = 0.87), the proposed method is more effective (AUC = 0.95) to distinguish the two types of diseases. The discrimination threshold of microcalcifications for the classification of diseases in CT images is found to be 3.78 based on the Youden index.

Conclusions

The proposed method can be further developed to improve the early diagnosis and diagnostic accuracy and reduce the clinical misdiagnosis rate of breast cancer.

Key Points

• Microcalcifications are of special importance to indicate early breast cancer.
• Grating-based phase-contrast imaging can improve the diagnosis of breast cancers.
• The method described here can better classify benign and malignant breast diseases.
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Metadata
Title
Diagnosis of breast cancer based on microcalcifications using grating-based phase contrast CT
Authors
Xinbin Li
Hewei Gao
Zhiqiang Chen
Li Zhang
Xiaohua Zhu
Shengping Wang
Weijun Peng
Publication date
01-09-2018
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
European Radiology / Issue 9/2018
Print ISSN: 0938-7994
Electronic ISSN: 1432-1084
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-017-5158-4

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