Keywords:
Breast, Mammography, Technical aspects, Screening, Cancer
Authors:
D. Christiaens1, M. van Lier2, B. Claikens1; 1Ostend/BE, 2Amsterdam/NL
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-1955
Aims and objectives
In mammography,
compression is given to the breast to reduce breast thickness,
tissue superposition and X-ray scattering to get a good image quality.
The force-standardized compression mammography (FSCM) is the standard for population-based mammography screening and diagnostic imaging.
Unfortunately,
there are no general accepted guidelines for compression force to obtain good image quality. It has been reported that a lot of variation exists between technicians and hospitals.
There is a difference in the given compression force in patients with small and large breast but there is also a difference in the contact area between the paddle and the breast,
which results in a strong variation in mean breast contact pressure (force divided by breast contact area).
The pressure given to a small breast is therefore on average much larger.
This results in potentially more pain/discomfort for these patients.
We studied the impact of mammographic compression after introducing a paddle with a real-time pressure indicator (Sensitive Sigmatm Paddle) (Figure 1) to enable a pressure-standardized compression mammography (PSCM).