High resolution Mammography Sensor

描述（申请人提供）：乳腺癌是美国女性癌症的主要原因，众所周知，如果在肿瘤很小且未累及腋窝淋巴结时发现乳腺癌，生存率非常高。然而，如果癌症随着时间的推移而扩散，生存率会显著下降。因此，早期发现乳腺肿瘤对于成功治疗乳腺癌和显著减少乳房x光检查至关重要（ACS, Shapiro, Tabar）。x射线乳房x线摄影目前使用薄膜筛检系统进行，虽然它在检测早期临床隐匿性乳腺癌（ACS, Kopans）方面显示出良好的成功，但薄膜筛检具有有限的纬度和动态范围（Nishikawa）。它的性能还受到检测效率和空间分辨率之间的权衡的影响，因为在更厚的屏幕上增加了光的传播，从而更有效地阻止x射线。鉴于这些局限性，我们计划探索一种新型的乳房x线摄影数字成像检测器。

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 mammography (ACS, Shapiro, Tabar). 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 (ACS, Kopans), the film-screen detector has limited latitude and dynamic range (Nishikawa.) 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.