The new development of dedicated breast CT technology

乳腺癌是全球女性发病率第一位的恶性肿瘤，严重影响着女性患者的身心健康。X射线钼靶成像是当前检查乳腺疾病的“金标准”，但其只能以二维透视图像显示乳腺的三维结构，病灶的相互叠加影响了疾病的检出率，且检查时需要挤压女性乳房，影响被检者的舒适性。乳腺专用CT技术仅针对乳腺结构进行断层扫描，在控制辐射剂量和保证舒适性的同时，具有三维准确立体定位的优点。基于光子计数探测器的X射线多能CT技术能够展现更为丰富的X射线衰减特性，提供更多有利于判别物质特性的信息，在剂量效率和软组织表征等方面具有明显优势。因此，乳腺专用低剂量多能CT有望成为早期乳腺癌诊断的一种新的工具。Breast cancer has the highest incidence rate among the female patients’ malignant tumors in the world and it seriously effects female physical and psychological health. Although being the “gold standard” for breast disease diagnosis, the X-ray mammography yields 2D projection images of the breast, in which the overlaying effect of lesions deteriorates the examination result. Moreover, the acquisition process of mammography was uncomfortable for patients because the compression for patient’s breast during detection process is inevitable. The dedicated breast CT is specially designed for breast tomoscan, and it can control radiation dose and guarantee detection comfortability; besides, its 3D result provides better lesion locating performance over the traditional 2D mammography. Able to acquire enough X-ray attenuation characters under different energy values of X-ray based on the photon counter detector, and spectrum CT can provide more information for material discrimination, which gives remarkable advantage in dose efficiency, soft tissue imaging and other applications. The low dose dedicated breast spectrum CT is a highly promising technique for the diagnosis of early breast cancer.国家重点研发计划(2016YFC0100400)“乳腺专用低剂量多能CT技术研究”；国家自然青年科学基金(81301225)“面向低剂量乳腺CT的影像链复合优化技术研究”[First-author’s address] Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Beijing Engineering Research Center of Radiographic Techniques and Equipment, Beijing 100049, China2135-1371