Use of a novel controlled drift detector for diffraction enhanced breast imaging

Diffraction imaging is a promising technique for improving the specificity of a mammographic exam. A controlled drift detector (CDD), having promising characteristics in terms of low noise and spectroscopic capability, was evaluated in its application to diffraction enhanced breast imaging (DEBI). Both transmission and diffraction images of a custom-built test object and of different meat samples were acquired and the detail-to-background contrast was measured. The results show that tissue discrimination is possible due to the different shapes of the diffraction patterns of different tissue types and that the CDD is a suitable detector for this application.