Aims and objectives
Breast cancer is the principal cause of death from cancer among women worldwide [1,
2].
Nevertheless,
early detection of breast cancer through adequate screening programs can save many lives,
reducing the overall mortality [3].
The best diagnostic tool for early detection of breast cancer is Full Field Digital Mammography (FFDM) [4].
However,
in a mammographic screening program healthy people are exposed to ionizing radiation,
thus special care is required in the evaluation of the patient absorbed dose.
In addition,
the new European Directive 59/2013/EURATOM (Fig....
Methods and materials
The 2ABD was defined as reported in Fig.
3 [6],where T is the breast thickness,
μen is the energy absorption coefficient and ka,i is the incident air kerma at the breast surface (mGy).
A solid water phantom composed of different slabs was employed for experimental measurements (Fig.
4).
Tube voltage (kVp),
tube load (mAs) and air kerma (ka,i) were measured through the Piranha® detector (RTI-Electronics AB,
Molndal,
Sweden) (Fig.
5),
while radiation dose was measured through a ionization chamber.
A set of measurements was performed...
Results
In Fig.
8 we show the comparison between ka,i measured and ka,i computed values for different kVp.
The good agreement between the measured and calculated values allows the evaluation of ka,i by equation in Fig.
6 for each mammographic equipment.
Fig.
9,
10,
11,
12 and 13 highlight the dose behavior as a function of depth in the solid water phantom.
Data were fitted with equation in Fig.
7 and the μen for each kVp was obtained.
The experimental data confirm the exponential decaytrend of...
Conclusion
2ABD,
defined as the average value of energy absorbed per unit mass in the breast,
is a physical quantity,
related to the patient exposure in mammographic procedures.
The method presented in this work requires the knowledge of kVp,
mAs,
breast thickness T and anode-filter combination.
All these parameters are set on the mammographic device and they are also reported in the DICOM-header file associated to each image.
All these parameters are available and could be employed to implement an automatic calculation of 2ABD for each...
Personal information
Our multidisciplinary group is composed by Radiologistsand Medical Physicists.
These are the institutions involved in the RADIOMA project:
-University of Pisa(University Radiologyand Department of Physics):D.
Caramella,
G.
Aringhieri,C.
Sottocornola,M.E.
Fantacci,
P.
Barca
-University Hospital of Pisa(AOUP):C.
Sottocornola,
C.
Marini,
A.C.
Traino
-National Institute for Nuclear Physics(INFN):M.E.
Fantacci,
P.
Barca,
C.
Sottocornola
-Fondazione Pisa
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