Classifying breast cancer and microcalcifications withmulti-contrast single-mask phase contrast imaging

Breast mammography suffers from poor contrast between cancers and dense breast tissue. Likewise, while breast microcalcifications play a crucial role in the early detection of breast cancer, mammographic techniques struggle to differentiate between benign and potentially malignant calcifications non-invasively. We will present our novel translatable method (not requiring high-resolution detector/mask pairs or spectral detectors) for a single shot single-mask approach. Such a mammographic phase contrast breast imaging can yield differential phase imaging to help distinguish low contrast masses while also yielding dark field information to help classify breast calcifications. Experiments with calcium oxalate and hydroxyapatite samples revealed distinct energy-dependent scattering profiles, particularly above 25 keV. This small angle scattering signals along with the differential phase contrast provides a promising avenue for non-invasive microcalcifiation classication as well as potential early detection of breast cancer in a single-shot mammographic setup. We will show non-spectroscopic and spectroscopic methods and compare classification benefits of each using breast tissue.