Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill developed a prototype stationary DBT system that does not include a rotating source; instead, it uses an array of carbon nanotube (CNT) x-ray sources retrofitted onto a Hologic Selenia Dimensions DBT system.

"In conventional DBT systems, a single x-ray source moves over a limited angle arc," wrote lead presenter Andrew Tucker, PhD, and colleagues in the presentation abstract. "This leads to motion blurring in the projection images associated with x-ray source motion and total scan times."

In the prototype device, Tucker's group used a linear-source array with 31 x-ray-generating focal spots distributed over a 30° angular span. The team used a phantom to evaluate the quality of the reconstruction images in different configurations.

Tucker's team found that system resolution along the scanning direction increased from 3.0 cycles/mm with DBT to 4.2 cycles/mm with the stationary DBT device, at a magnification factor of 1.08.

"We demonstrated successful construction and operation of the [stationary DBT] system integrating a CNT x-ray source array with a Hologic DBT system," Tucker's team wrote. "The spatial resolution of the [stationary DBT] system is ... substantially increased over the corresponding DBT system."