Abstract
Breast cancer is the most frequently appearing cancer in women, these days. To reduce mortality of breast cancer, periodic check-up is strongly recommended. X-ray mammography is one of powerful diagnostic imaging systems to detect 50~100 um micro-calcification which is the early sign of breast cancer. Although x-ray mammography has very high spatial resolution, it is not easy yet to distinguish cancerous tissue from normal tissues in mammograms and new tissue characterizing methods are required. Recently ultrasound elastography technique has been developed, which uses the phenomenon that cancerous tissue is harder than normal tissues. However its spatial resolution is not enough to detect breast cancer. In order to develop a new elastography system with high resolution we are developing x-ray elasticity imaging technique. It uses the small differences of tissue positions with and without external breast compression and requires an algorithm to detect tissue displacement. In this paper, computer simulation is done for preliminary study of x-ray elasticity imaging. First, 3D x-ray breast phantom for modeling woman's breast is created and its elastic model for FEM (finite element method) is generated. After then, FEM experiment is performed under the compression of the breast phantom. Using the obtained displacement data, 3D x-ray phantom is deformed and the final mammogram under the compression is generated. The simulation result shows the feasibility of x-ray elasticity imaging. We think that this preliminary study is helpful for developing and verifying a new algorithm of x-ray elasticity imaging.
