Feasibility of full-field single photon emission mammotomography using a novel CZT detector

A new 16×20cm² detector using quantized cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) has been developed for scintimammography, and is here incorporated into the application specific emission tomography (ASET) system for dedicated emission mammotomography. The ASET prototype utilizes a compact 12.5×12.5cm² FOV, quantized NaI(Tl) crystal based gamma camera (LumaGEM™) for dedicated breast imaging on a hemispherical gantry system. To avoid truncation of large breasts in reconstructed images, a shifted camera acquisition technique was therefore used with full azimuthal rotation about the pendant breast; while each projection was intentionally truncated, acquisition and reconstruction of conjugate views eliminated any truncation in the iteratively reconstructed images.