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Breast Ct: A Tool for Breast Cancer Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment
John Boone, University of California Davis Medical Center, Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering
May 4, 2007
Abstract
Mammography is used for breast cancer screening throughout the developed world. However, mammography is known to have low sensitivity in some women. In our laboratories, we have developed a tomographic method for breast imaging, breast computed tomography (CT). Two prototype breast CT scanners have been designed, fabricated, and tested. We have performed over 100 CT scans on women participating in phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials. The image quality characteristics of the breast CT scanner has been evaluated, including the modulation transfer function (MTF) and noise characteristics of the scanner. The second prototype system has also been outfitted with a positron emission tomography (PET) detector system which is currently operational, and will be used in clinical trials shortly. The ultimate utility of the breast CT scanner for screening, or diagnostic evaluation is still under investigation. We hypothesize that the breast CT platform will prove to be quite useful for interventional procedures involving the breast, including breast biopsy and ablation techniques. Future studies involving such procedures will be touched upon in this presentation.
Biography
John M. Boone, Ph.D., is professor and vice chairman of the Department of Radiology at UC Davis Medical Center, and also holds an appointment as professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Boone did his undergraduate work in biophysics at the University of California Berkeley, and received his Ph.D. in medical physics at UC Irvine. He has held previous faculty positions at the University of Missouri Columbia, and at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He is the principal investigator of the breast tomography project at UC Davis, and has been involved in breast imaging research for almost 20 years. Dr. Boone is the head scientific officer for the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), and he also chairs the committee on computed tomography for the International Commission on Radiological Units. He stepped down as Deputy Editor for Imaging of Medical Physics on Jan 1, 2007. Dr. Boone is co-author on a textbook (The Essential Physics of Medical Imaging) which is used in radiology and graduate imaging programs around the English-speaking world.