Hybrid thick-slice reconstruction in wide-angle DBT for optimal micro-calcification and mass perceptibility

Wide–angle digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is well known to offer benefits in mass perceptibility compared to narrow–angle DBT due to reduced anatomical overlap. Regarding the perceptibility of micro–calcifications the situation is somehow inverted. On the one hand this can be related to effects during data acquisition and their impact on the system MTF. On the other hand there is a wider spread of calcifications in depth direction in narrow–angle DBT, which distributes calcifications over more slices. This is equivalent to an inherent thicker slice for high spatial frequencies. In this work we want to assume an equivalent quality of raw data and only focus on the effects of different acquisition angles in the reconstruction. We propose an algorithm which creates so–called hybrid thick DBT slices and optimizes the visualization of calcifications while preserving the high mass perceptibility of thin wide–angle DBT slices. The algorithm is purely based on filtered backprojection (FBP) and can be implemented in an efficient manner. For validation simulation studies using the VICTRE (FDA) pipeline are performed. Our results indicate that hybrid thick–slices in wide-angle DBT enable to successfully solve the contrarian imaging tasks of high mass and high calcification perception within one imaging setup.