3D density estimation in digital breast tomosynthesis: application to needle path planning for breast biopsy

Laurence Vancamberg, Nausikaä Geeraert, Razvan Iordache, Giovanni Palma, Rémy Klausz, Serge Muller

Abstract: Needle insertion planning for digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) guided biopsy has the potential to improve patient comfort and intervention safety. However, a relevant planning should take into account breast tissue deformation and lesion displacement during the procedure. Deformable models, like finite elements, use the elastic characteristics of the breast to evaluate the deformation of tissue during needle insertion. This paper presents a novel approach to locally estimate the Young's modulus of the breast tissue directly from the DBT data. The method consists in computing the fibroglandular percentage in each of the acquired DBT projection images, then reconstructing the density volume. Finally, this density information is used to compute the mechanical parameters for each finite element of the deformable mesh, obtaining a heterogeneous DBT based breast model. Preliminary experiments were performed to evaluate the relevance of this method for needle path planning in DBT guided biopsy. The results show that the heterogeneous DBT based breast model improves needle insertion simulation accuracy in 71% of the cases, compared to a homogeneous model or a binary fat/fibroglandular tissue model.