Imaging study of a phase-sensitive breast-CT system in continuous acquisition mode

The SYRMA-CT project aims to set-up the first clinical trial of phase-contrast breast Computed Tomography with synchrotron radiation at the SYRMEP beamline of Elettra, the Italian synchrotron light source. The challenge in a dedicated breast CT is to match a high spatial resolution with a low dose level. In order to fulfil these requirements, the SYRMA-CT project uses a large area CdTe single photon counting detector (Pixirad-8), simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART) and phase retrieval pre-processing. This work investigates the imaging performances of the system in a continuous acquisition mode and with a low dose level towards the clinical application. A custom test object and a large surgical sample have been studied.