Full field mammography with tissue exposure control, tomosynthesis, and dynamic field of view processing
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Accused Products
Abstract
A mammography system using a tissue exposure control relying on estimates of the thickness of the compressed and immobilized breast and of breast density to automatically derive one or more technic factors. The system further uses a tomosynthesis arrangement that maintains the focus of an anti-scatter grid on the x-ray source and also maintains the field of view of the x-ray receptor. Finally, the system finds an outline that forms a reduced field of view that still encompasses the breast in the image, and uses for further processing, transmission or archival storage the data within said reduced field of view.
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Citations
25 Claims
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1-5. -5. (canceled)
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6. A mammography method comprising:
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compressing a patient'"'"'s breast between compression surfaces that in turn are between a source of x-ray'"'"'s and an x-ray imaging receptor, said source having a focal spot from which it selectively emits x-rays toward the receptor;
providing an anti-scatter grid having partitions focused on the focal spot in the source;
moving each of the source and the receptor to two or more different positions relative to the compression surfaces and the patient'"'"'s breast;
emitting, at each of said positions, x-rays from the source that pass through the breast and impinge on the receptor;
deriving, from the receptor, information related to respective two dimensional projection x-ray images for each of said positions;
adjusting the grid relative to the compression surfaces and the breast to maintain the partitions thereof focused on the focal spot at each of said positions;
processing the information related to said projection images of the breast. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A system comprising:
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compression surfaces defining a space in which a patient'"'"'s breast is compressed for imaging;
a source of x-rays at one side of the compression surfaces and an x-ray imaging receptor at another side of the compression surfaces and facing the source to receive therefrom x-rays that have passed through a breast compressed in said space, said source having a focal spot from which it selectively emits x-rays toward the receptor;
a support structure selectively moving at least one of the source and the receptor to two or more different imaging positions relative to the compression surfaces and a patient'"'"'s breast compressed in said space;
a control selectively energizing the source to emit, at each of said positions, x-rays that pass through the breast and impinge on the receptor and selectively causing the receptor to output information related to respective two-dimensional projection x-ray images for each of said imaging positions;
an anti-scatter grid mounted for movement relative to said compression surfaces to grid positions corresponding to said imaging positions and having partitions that are focused on the focal spot in the source at each of said imaging positions; and
a computer configured to process the information related to said projection images in a tomosynthesis process to generate information representative of tomosyntesis images of the breast. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23)
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24. A mammography method comprising:
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compressing a patient'"'"'s breast between a source of x-rays and an x-ray imaging receptor;
moving at least one of the source and the receptor to two or more different imaging positions relative to the breast;
wherein said receptor has an overall image area selectively outputting information describing an image of a size corresponding to said overall image area;
emitting, at each of said positions, x-rays from the source that pass through the breast and impinge on the receptor;
deriving, from the receptor, reduced field of view information describing respective two-dimensional projection x-ray images for each of said positions, each of said projection images having an image area smaller than said overall image area of the receptor;
processing the reduced field of view information into information describing tomosyntesis images of the breast. - View Dependent Claims (25)
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Specification