7. Tomosynthesis

CBCT tomography makes 3D imaging accessible on traditional radiology equipment equipped with flat digital detectors (or FPDs). It enables 3D volumes to be reconstructed in conditions close to those of CT scans, but on the other hand it requires a mechanism that ensures movement through at least 210° (a motorized C-arm with precise, robust mechanics). The use of such hoops is not always suited to examination conditions. There is therefore another technique, tomosynthesis, which makes do with simpler movement of the source and detector (the latter is often immobile), and which requires only a small number of projections (a few dozen), at the cost of a loss of resolution in an axis perpendicular to the detector and source movement.

To understand tomosynthesis, it's useful to refer to the old analog tomography, practiced for half a century with X-ray films, but whose...