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.
