Microwave-induced thermoacoustic scanning CT for high-contrast and noninvasive breast cancer imaging

A fast thermoacoustic computed tomography system with a multielement linear transducer array was developed to image biological tissues with circular scanning. The spatial resolution of the imaging system and the spectra of the thermoacoustic signals were analyzed. A modified integration backprojection algorithm using velocity potential was employed to recover the direct energy deposition distribution, signal processing methods, and reconstruction algorithms were validated by imaging a phantom. The differences of the microwave-frequency dielectric properties between malignant and normal adipose-dominated tissues in the breast are considerable, and the absorption contrast can reach as large as 6:1 at 1.2 GHz. An experiment of human breast tissue with a tumor was performed with this system; the thermoacoustic images reconstructed by a limited-field-filtered backprojection algorithm and a modified integration backprojection algorithm were also compared with a mammogram. Our results show that the system can provide a rapid and noninvasive approach for high-contrast breast cancer imaging. (C) 2008 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.