Limit of Detection in X-ray Diffraction Measurements of Tissue Equivalent Samples

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series Vol. 637; no. 1; pp. 12037 - 12040
• Main Authors: Zheng, Y, Vassiljev, N, Konstantinidis, A, Griffiths, J, Speller, R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 16.09.2015
• Subjects: Diffraction patterns; Equivalence; Mammography; Perspex; Physics; X-ray diffraction
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/637/1/012037

There is a suggestion of a new approach to mammography whereby following a conventional mammogram, the radiologist could interrogate suspicious regions using X-ray diffraction whilst the patient is still present and to establish the true extent of disease. A starting point for this work is to quantify the minimum detectable amount of breast cancer within a realistic thickness phantom. Perspex has a similar diffraction pattern to healthy breast tissue whilst water is similar to breast tumour, hence these two materials are used as tissue equivalent test objects for X-ray diffraction measurements. The preliminary results show linear agreement between the ratio of Perspex to water and the ratio of the diffraction peak intensities at 0.7 nm-1 and 1.5 nm-1. The minimum detectable limit for a component of the two 'tissue' mix was found to be 4.1%. This suggests that X-ray diffraction can be used to quantify tissue like mixtures down to the 4.1% 95.9% mix level and hence has a strong potential for delineating the extent of infiltration disease.