Background/introduction
Dosimetry in breast x-ray imaging is important in order to evaluate the potential harm caused to the patient due to ionising radiation. In particular for breast cancer screening dealing with healthy women the risk-benefit balanceshould be carefully assessed.
Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) has shown to improve cancer detection compared to digital mammography (DM) in a screening population [1-3]. Hence, the benefit of DBT in screening has been proven. However, not many countries have adapted to DBT-based breast cancer screening due to ongoing debates on overdiagnosis,...
Description of activity and work performed
Data selection
Anonymized patient data were collected over 3 years (2016-2019) from five systems: Siemens Inspiration, Siemens Inspiration PRIME, Siemens Revelation PRIME, Hologic Selenia Dimensions and GE Senographe Pristina using the dose monitoring application DOSE (QaelumNV, Belgium). Data were selected based on age (45-75 years), compression force (80-120N) and breast thickness (10-100 mm), resulting in7333 DBT series and 49576DM images (Table 1). Mean glandular dose (MGD) was calculated following Dance’ method [7-8] as well as retrieved from the image header (indicated dose). We should note...
Conclusion and recommendations
The overall dose increase from DM to DBT is now documented; overall median doses for DM and DBT are 1.19 and 1.94 mGy respectively and are below the (Belgian) diagnostic reference level of 2 mGy for mammography. Justification of DBT doses can use these data, but has to include diagnostic accuracy as a first factor.
Personal/organisational information
L. Cockmartin; Leuven/BE - nothing to disclose D. Gans; Leuven/BE - nothing to disclose S. Dewilde; Leuven/BE - Employee at QaelumNV H. Bosmans; Leuven/BE - Research/Grant Support at GE Healthcare and Siemens Healthcare - Board Member at QaelumNV
References
1.Hovda T, Holen ÅS, Lång K, Albertsen JL, Bjørndal H, Brandal SHB, Sahlberg KK, Skaane P, Suhrke Pand Hofvind S.Interval and Consecutive Round Breast Cancer after Digital Breast Tomosynthesis and Synthetic 2D Mammography versus Standard 2D Digital Mammography in BreastScreen Norway. Radiology 2019;191337
2.Bernardi D, Gentilini MA, De Nisi M, Pellegrini M, Fantò C, Valentini M, Sabatino V, Luparia Aand Houssami N.Effect of implementing digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) instead of mammography on population screening outcomes including interval cancer rates: Results of the Trento DBT pilot...
