In breast tomosynthesis several projection views of the object are acquired over a limited angular range from which slice images are reconstructed. The image quality of the reconstructed slices, however, depends on the geometric acquisitions parameters and on the reconstruction algorithm. We investigated the impact of the angular range of data acquisition and number of projection views on image quality by performing 3-D cascaded linear system modeling and phantom measurements. The results show that a larger angular range not only increases resolution perpendicular to the slices but also improves the visibility of low-frequency objects since the sampling area in Fourier space is mainly limited at low-frequencies. The effect on contrast resolution is demonstrated also with clinical data sets.
['Thomas Mertelmeier', 'Jasmina Ludwig', 'Bo Zhao', 'Wei Zhao']
Optimization of Tomosynthesis Acquisition Parameters: Angular Range and Number of Projections