X-ray diffraction studies are used to identify specific materials. Several laboratory-based x-ray diffraction studies were
made for breast cancer diagnosis. Ideally a large area, low noise, linear and wide dynamic range digital x-ray detector is
required to perform x-ray diffraction measurements. Recently, digital detectors based on Complementary Metal-Oxide-
Semiconductor (CMOS) Active Pixel Sensor (APS) technology have been used in x-ray diffraction studies. Two APS
detectors, namely Vanilla and Large Area Sensor (LAS), were developed by the Multidimensional Integrated Intelligent
Imaging (MI-3) consortium to cover a range of scientific applications including x-ray diffraction. The MI-3 Plus
consortium developed a novel large area APS, named as Dynamically Adjustable Medical Imaging Technology
(DynAMITe), to combine the key characteristics of Vanilla and LAS with a number of extra features. The active area
(12.8 × 13.1 cm2) of DynaMITe offers the ability of angle dispersive x-ray diffraction (ADXRD). The current study
demonstrates the feasibility of using DynaMITe for breast cancer diagnosis by identifying six breast-equivalent plastics.
Further work will be done to optimize the system in order to perform ADXRD for identification of suspicious areas of
breast tissue following a conventional mammogram taken with the same sensor.
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