Generating a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram

• US 9,792,703 B2
• Filed: 07/06/2015
• Issued: 10/17/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 07/06/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Siemens Healthineers AG (Siemens AG)
• Original Assignee: Siemens Healthcare GMBH (Siemens AG)
• Inventors: Costa, Maria Jimena, Jerebko, Anna, Kelm, Michael, Pauly, Olivier, Tsymbal, Alexey
• Primary Examiner(s): SAINI, AMANDEEP SINGH
• Application Number:
  US14/792,259
• Publication Number:
  US 20170011534A1
• Time in Patent Office: 834 Days
• Field of Search: 382131
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/025 Tomosynthesis
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/502 for diagnosis of breast, i.e. mammography
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/003 Reconstruction from projections, e.g. tomography
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/008 Specific post-processing after tomographic reconstruction, e.g. voxelisation, metal artifact correction
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 15/08 Volume rendering
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10081 Computed x-ray tomography [CT]
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10088 Magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10112 Digital tomosynthesis [DTS]
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10124 Digitally reconstructed radiograph [DRR]
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/20064 Wavelet transform [DWT]
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30068 Mammography; Breast
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30096 Tumor; Lesion
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2210/41 Medical
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2211/436 Limited angle
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/06 Topological mapping of higher dimensional structures onto lower dimensional surfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/0012 Biomedical image inspection
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/11 Region-based segmentation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/62 of area, perimeter, diameter or volume

Abstract

A method for generating a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram with enhanced contrast for structures of interest includes acquiring a three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume having a plurality of voxels. A three-dimensional relevance map that encodes for the voxels the relevance of the underlying structure for a diagnosis is generated. A synthetic two-dimensional mammogram is calculated based on the three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume and the three-dimensional relevance map.

Claims

1. A method for generating a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram with enhanced contrast for structures of interest, the method comprising:

acquiring, with a medical scanner, a three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume having a plurality of voxels;

generating a three-dimensional relevance map that encodes for the plurality of voxels a relevance of an underlying structure for a diagnosis; and

calculating a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram based on the three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume and the three-dimensional relevance map,

wherein calculating the synthetic two-dimensional mammogram is based on ray-casting in the generated three-dimensional relevance map and the acquired three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the three-dimensional relevance map is generated based on a predefined generating model from the acquired three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the predefined generating model is learned by analyzing a set of three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volumes.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising computing features at the plurality of voxels of the three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volumes to describe a local visual context.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising creating a plurality of channels from the acquired three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the plurality of channels is created based on gradient magnitudes, gradient orientations, or Laplacians.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising determining relevance values of the three-dimensional relevance map, the determining of the relevance values comprising separately analyzing the plurality of channels.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising post-processing the generated three-dimensional relevance map to minimize the impact of noisy predictions.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the post-processing is performed by using a Gaussian filtering of the generated three-dimensional relevance map.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising adding a global constant weight to the generated three-dimensional relevance map.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein calculating the synthetic two-dimensional mammogram is based on weighted averaging along determined rays.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein calculating the synthetic two-dimensional mammogram is based on determining a maximum weighted value found along rays.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying the synthetic two-dimensional mammogram on a screen.

14. A mammographic device for generating a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram with enhanced contrast for structures of interest, the mammographic device comprising:

an imaging device configured to acquire a three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume having a plurality of voxels; and

one or more processors configured to;

generate a three-dimensional relevance map that encodes for the plurality of voxels a relevance of an underlying structure for a diagnosis; and

calculate a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram based on the three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume and the three-dimensional relevance map,

wherein the calculation of the synthetic two-dimensional mammogram is based on ray-casting in the generated three-dimensional relevance map and the acquired three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume.

15. In a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a computer to generate a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram with enhanced contrast for structures of interest, the instructions comprising:

acquiring a three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume having a plurality of voxels;

generating a three-dimensional relevance map that encodes for the plurality of voxels a relevance of an underlying structure for a diagnosis; and

calculating a synthetic two-dimensional mammogram based on the three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume and the three-dimensional relevance map,

wherein calculating the synthetic two-dimensional mammogram is based on ray-casting in the generated three-dimensional relevance map and the acquired three-dimensional digital breast tomosynthesis volume.