High Resolution Imaging Detector for Mammography

描述（由申请人提供）： 乳腺癌是美国女性癌症的主要原因。众所周知，如果乳腺癌在肿瘤很小且不涉及腋窝淋巴结时被检测到，则存活率非常高。然而，如果癌症随着时间的推移而扩散，存活率会显着下降。因此，乳腺肿瘤的早期检测对于乳腺癌的成功治疗至关重要，并且通过X射线乳房摄影术早期检测乳腺癌可以显著降低乳腺癌死亡率（30 - 50%）。X射线乳房摄影术目前使用胶片-屏幕系统进行，虽然它在检测早期临床隐匿性乳腺癌方面取得了很好的成功，但胶片-屏幕检测器的宽容度和动态范围有限。它的性能也受到检测效率和空间分辨率之间的权衡的影响，这是由于在更厚的屏幕中增加了光的传播，而更厚的屏幕在阻止X射线方面更有效。鉴于这些局限性，我们计划探索一种新的数字成像检测器的乳腺摄影。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Breast carcinoma is the leading cause of cancer in women in the U.S. It is well known that if breast cancer is detected when the tumor is small and axillary nodes are not involved, the survival rate is very high. However, if the cancer has spread with time, the survival rate drops significantly. Early detection of breast tumors is therefore critical to the successful treatment of breast cancer and significant reduction in the breast cancer mortality rate (30 to 50%) can be achieved through early detection of breast carcinoma by X-ray mammography. X-ray mammography is currently performed using a film-screen system and while it has shown good success in detecting early stage, clinically occult breast cancer, the film-screen detector has limited latitude and dynamic range. Its performance is also affected by trade-off between detection efficiency and spatial resolution due to increased light spreading in thicker screens which are more efficient in stopping X-rays. In view of these limitations, we plan to explore a novel digital imaging detector for mammography.