Diffraction Enhanced Imaging for Analyzing Breast Samples

The development of new techniques to diagnostic cancer and other diseases in breast is a world tendency due to the increasing number of breast cancer cases. This work uses the diffraction enhanced imaging (DEI) characteristics to analyze breast tissues details with close attenuation coefficients. An X-ray imaging systems with DEI techniques were developed using synchrotron radiation. The DEI experiment was performed in D10A-XRD2 beamline at the Brazilian Synchrotron-LNLS. The pre-monochromator, upstream of the beamline was adjusted to 10.7 keV. The samples were positioned between two channel-cut (Si-333) in non-dispersive geometry mounted in a double axes diffractometer. A direct conversion water-cooled CCD camera of 1242 pixel times 1152 pixel of 25 mum times 25 mum each was used as a two-dimensional detector in scanning mode. The DEI system can show details in low attenuation tissues based on the contrast imaging obtained by attenuation, refraction gradient and ultra-small angle scatter characteristics. In this work the capacity to observe different types and details in breast tissues structures were investigated.