An improved method for enhancing the contrast between background and
lesion areas of a breast undergoing dual-head scintimammographic
examination comprising: 1) acquiring a pair of digital images from a pair
of small FOV or mini gamma cameras compressing the breast under
examination from opposing sides; 2) inverting one of the pair of images
to align or co-register with the other of the images to obtain
co-registered pixel values; 3) normalizing the pair of images
pixel-by-pixel by dividing pixel values from each of the two acquired
images and the co-registered image by the average count per pixel in the
entire breast area of the corresponding detector; and 4) multiplying the
number of counts in each pixel by the value obtained in step 3 to produce
a normalization enhanced two dimensional contrast map. This enhanced
(increased contrast) contrast map enhances the visibility of minor local
increases (uptakes) of activity over the background and therefore
improves lesion detection sensitivity, especially of small lesions.