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Diagnosis of breast cancer based on microcalcifications using grating-based phase contrast CT

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European Radiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Breast to this article was published on 30 May 2018

Abstract

Objectives

Microcalcifications are an important feature in the diagnosis of breast cancer, especially in the early stages. In this paper, a CT-based method is proposed to potentially distinguish benign and malignant breast diseases based on the distributions of microcalcifications using grating-based phase-contrast imaging on a conventional X-ray tube.

Methods

The method presented based on the ratio of dark-field signals to attenuation signals in CT images is compared with the existing method based on the ratio in projections, and the threshold for the classification of microcalcifications in the two types of breast diseases is obtained using our approach. The experiment was operated on paraffin-fixed specimens that originated from 20 female patients ranging from 27–65 years old.

Results

Compared with the method based on projection images (AUC = 0.87), the proposed method is more effective (AUC = 0.95) to distinguish the two types of diseases. The discrimination threshold of microcalcifications for the classification of diseases in CT images is found to be 3.78 based on the Youden index.

Conclusions

The proposed method can be further developed to improve the early diagnosis and diagnostic accuracy and reduce the clinical misdiagnosis rate of breast cancer.

Key Points

• Microcalcifications are of special importance to indicate early breast cancer.

• Grating-based phase-contrast imaging can improve the diagnosis of breast cancers.

• The method described here can better classify benign and malignant breast diseases.

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Funding

This study has received funding by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11235007) and a Tsinghua University Independent Research Project Grant, “Research on Key Technologies and CT Reconstruction methods of multi-energy X-ray imaging”.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing, China

    Xinbin Li, Zhiqiang Chen, Li Zhang & Xiaohua Zhu

  2. Key Laboratory of Particle and Radiation Imaging (Tsinghua University) of Ministry of Education, Haidian District, Beijing, China

    Xinbin Li, Zhiqiang Chen, Li Zhang & Xiaohua Zhu

  3. RefleXion Medical, Hayward, CA, 94545, USA

    Hewei Gao

  4. Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, 270 Dongan Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China

    Shengping Wang & Weijun Peng

Authors
  1. Xinbin Li
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  2. Hewei Gao
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  3. Zhiqiang Chen
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  4. Li Zhang
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  5. Xiaohua Zhu
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Correspondence to Zhiqiang Chen.

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Guarantor

The scientific guarantor of this publication is Zhiqiang Chen.

Conflict of interest

The authors of this manuscript declare no relationships with any companies whose products or services may be related to the subject matter of the article.

Statistics and biometry

One of the authors, Shengping Wang, has significant statistical expertise.

Ethical approval

Institutional Review Board approval was obtained.

Informed consent

Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects (patients) in this study.

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Li, X., Gao, H., Chen, Z. et al. Diagnosis of breast cancer based on microcalcifications using grating-based phase contrast CT. Eur Radiol 28, 3742–3750 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-017-5158-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-017-5158-4

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