Abstract #4467

Towards Microcalcifcation Detection Using Susceptibility Weighted Phase Imaging: Simulations and Phantom Experiments

Richard A. Baheza¹, E. Brian Welch², John C. Gore¹, Thomas E. Yankeelov¹

¹VUIIS, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA; ²Philips Healthcare, Philips, Cleveland, OH, USA

The presence of calcium deposits in the breast can be an indicator of malignancy, so the ability to detect such abnormalities by MRI would be significant. Calcium deposits have a different magnetic susceptibility from surrounding tissues that can in principle be observed using susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI). Here we introduce a technique to locate a susceptibility induced signature within a data set by computing the cross-correlation between a template and the target image.