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Simulation and evaluation of high-performance cost-effective positron emission mammography scanner

Breast cancer is the main cause of tumor deaths in women, thus several imaging modalities have been introduced recently to better diagnose the disease. New breast cancer cases were estimated to reach up to 246,660 in 2017, and the mortality rate was above 40,000. Early diagnosis is widely approved as being essential for an effective treatment and it also helps to reduce the incidences and mortality rates. Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) is a breast-dedicated imaging device which uses a pair of annihilation gamma photons to detect abnormalities in the breast tissue. PEM device is compact in nature with a reduced field of view to cover the entire breast region, and it employs few detector modules which makes it cost-efficient. To effectively diagnose breast cancer at a very early stage, a device with high spatial resolution and high sensitivity is required. PEM detectors based on semiconductor materials are characterized by an excellent intrinsic spatial resolution but are not cost-effective, whereas detectors based on scintillator crystals are cost-effective but have limited intrinsic resolution to detect small breast lesions. This study focuses on improving the resolution of scintillator detectors by simulating a PEM scanner employing 1 × 1 × 10 mm3 laser processed scintillator crystal. The simulation was done with a GEANT4 application for emission tomography (GATE) software, and performance evaluation tests were carried out according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) standards. The scanner geometry has 90 mm transaxial field of view (FOV) and 105 mm axial FOV. Evaluation results showed that the scanner has 10.6% system sensitivity, 1.0 mm spatial resolution at the center of the FOV (CFOV) and at 2.5 cm transaxial direction. The resolution at the axial 2.5 cm position is 2.1 mm. NEMA image quality test and Derenzo phantom study showed that the scanner can easily resolve 1 mm in diameter hot rods.