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，如果乳腺癌是在肿瘤很小且没有腋窝淋巴结受累的情况下发现的，那么存活率非常高。然而，如果癌症随着时间的推移而扩散，存活率就会显著下降。因此，早期发现乳腺肿瘤对乳腺癌的成功治疗至关重要，通过X射线乳房摄影早期发现乳腺癌，可以显著降低乳腺癌死亡率(30%至50%)。目前使用胶片-屏幕系统进行X射线乳房X光检查，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-屏幕探测器的纬度和动态范围有限。它的性能也受到探测效率和空间分辨率之间的权衡，因为更厚的屏幕上的光传播增加了，从而更有效地阻止了X射线。鉴于这些局限性，我们计划探索一种用于乳房X光检查的新型数字成像探测器。

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 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.