Early detection of breast tumors is critical to the successful treatment of breast cancer. At present, x-ray mammography is the only imaging modality with a proven capability for detecting early-stage breast cancer and reducing mortality. To ensure early detection mammographic screening must be accomplished with a significantly improved image quality using the lowest possible radiation dose. Presently, the most efficient and cost-effective method to achieve this objective is screen-film mammography, which limits the display of low contrast structures, typical of mammary tumors and micro-calcifications. Detectors based on CCD or a-Si:H arrays promise to overcome these limitations. However, the use of conventional phosphors in these detectors limits their performance due to the compromise between x-ray stopping power and spatial resolution. To address these issues, we propose to develop an advanced digital detector based on pixilated micro-structured scintillator allowing high resolution, high contrast diagnostic imaging with enhanced sensitivity. The novel scintillator will allow imaging with lower dose than film-screen, will be ideal for new digital mammography systems, and will provide a wide dynamic range along with the capability of image enhancements.
In addition to the enormous clinical x-ray imaging market, the proposed development of novel pixelated scintillator would find widespread use in instrumentation whenever high-resolution x-ray imaging is used. A novel imaging system formed by coupling these sensors to digital detectors may be applied to macromolecular crystallography, non-destructive testing, x-ray astronomy, and basic physics experiments. Currently the x-ray imaging market is estimated to be in hundreds of millions of dollars, a significant fraction of which represents applications where the proposed technology may be directly adapted.
