Combining Ultrasound and X-Ray Imaging for Mammography: A Prototype Design

This study aims at the combination of 3D breast ultrasound and 2D mammography images to improve the accuracy of diagnosis of breast cancer. It was shown that ultrasound breast imaging has advantages for differentiating cysts and solid masses which are not visible in an X-ray image. Moreover, the specificity in X-ray imaging decreases with an increasing breast thickness, so that ultrasound is usually used as an adjunct to X-ray breast imaging. A fully automatic system to obtain both 2D mammography and 3D ultrasound images is used. The alignment of a 2D mammography image in the cone-beam coordinate system and 3D ultrasound image in a Cartesian coordinate system is the essential task in this study. We have shown that deviations up to 23 mm caused by the cone-beam system can be calculated and corrected utilizing the geometry information of the hardware. The multimodal image reading tool is presented in a GUI for clinical diagnosis. The presented setup might lead to a distinct improvement in efficiency and add diagnostic value to the acquisition.