Full field mammography with tissue exposure control, tomosynthesis, and dynamic field of view processing

A system comprising:

• compression surfaces defining a space in which a patient's breast is immobilized for imaging;
• a source of x-rays at one side of the compression surfaces and an x-ray imaging receptor at another side of the compression surfaces and facing the source to receive therefrom x-rays that have passed through a breast immobilized in said space, said source having a focal spot from which it selectively emits x-rays toward the receptor;
• a support structure selectively moving at least one of the source and the receptor to more than two different imaging positions relative to the compression surfaces and a patient's breast immobilized in said space:
• a control selectively energizing the source to emit, at each of said positions, x-rays that pass through the breast and impinge on the receptor and selectively causing the receptor to output information related to respective two-dimensional projection x-ray images for each of said imaging positions;
• an anti-scatter grid that is retractable so it can be removed from a space between one of said compression surfaces and said x-ray imaging receptor, said grid having partitions that are focused on the focal spot in the source when the grid is not retracted;
• and
• a computer configured to process the information related to said projection images in a tomosynthesis process to generate information representative of reconstructed tomosynthesis images of the breast.

A mammography method of producing reconstructed tomosynthesis images of a patient's breast comprising:

• immobilizing a patient's breast between a source of x-rays and an x-ray imaging receptor;
• moving at least one of the source and the receptor to more than two different imaging positions relative to the breast;
• wherein said receptor has an overall image area selectively outputting information describing an image of a size corresponding to said overall image area;
• emitting, at each of said positions, x-rays from the source that pass through the breast and impinge on the receptor while said breast remains immobilized between the source of x-rays and the imaging receptor;
• deriving, from the receptor, reduced field of view information describing respective two-dimensional projection x-ray images for each of said positions, each of said projection images having an image area smaller than said overall image area of the receptor;
• and
• processing the reduced field of view information into information describing reconstructed tomosynthesis images of the breast.