Digital Mammography
NCCPM were highly involved in the switch over from film/screen to digital imaging. There are now three main digital modalities in use: Digital mammography (2D), Tomosynthesis (Quasi 3D) and Contrast Enhanced Mammography. It was necessary to develop appropriate standards and testing procedures for measuring image quality and radiation dose for the various technologies and modalities and NCCPM have been involved in many of these.
NCCPM has participated in the development of a European protocol for quality control of digital mammography in breast screening. Further information is available at www.euref.org
A supplement to the protocol which provides updated guidance was published in 2013: https://euref.org/download-section/european-guidelines/
UK guidance on testing digital mammography systems is available at www.gov.uk/government/collections/breast-screening-professional-guidance
Tomosynthesis
NCCPM were also on the working party for European Guidelines for tomosynthesis. Initially in the Euref Guidelines: ‘EUREF Tomosynthesis Protocol version 1.03’ found in https://euref.org/downloads/
There is now updated guidance produced by EFOMP: in ‘EFOMP protocol: quality control in digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT)’: https://www.efomp.org/index.php?r=fc&id=protocols UK guidance on testing tomosynthesis systems is available at www.gov.uk/government/collections/breast-screening-professional-guidance
Contrast Enhanced Mammography
NCCPM has been involved in developing testing of Contrast Enhanced Mammography. There is no official European or UK protocol yet, but we have helped develop a phantom and published on testing:
J M Oduko, P Homolka, V Jones, D Whitwam Dose and image quality measurements for contrast-enhanced dual energy mammography systems Proc. of SPIE, Medical Imaging 2015: Physics of Medical ImaginVol.9412, 94125I-1 (http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=2210333)
Evaluation Reports
NCCPM have evaluated these technologies and the reports can be found in: Technical Evaluations
