Premium
Diagnostic reference levels for digital mammography in New South Wales
Author(s) -
Suleiman Moayyad E,
McEntee Mark F,
Cartwright Lucy,
Diffey Jennifer,
Brennan Patrick C
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of medical imaging and radiation oncology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.31
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1754-9485
pISSN - 1754-9477
DOI - 10.1111/1754-9485.12540
Subject(s) - percentile , medicine , mammography , digital mammography , nuclear medicine , quality assurance , breast imaging , radiation dose , radiology , medical physics , statistics , mathematics , breast cancer , pathology , external quality assessment , cancer
This work aims to explore radiation doses delivered in screening mammography in Australia, with a focus on whether compressed breast thickness should be used as a guide when determining patient derived diagnostic reference levels ( DRL s). Methods Anonymized mammograms (52,405) were retrieved from a central database, and DICOM headers were extracted using third party software. Women with breast implants, breast thicknesses outside 20–110 mm and images with incomplete exposure or quality assurance ( QA ) data were excluded. Exposure and QA information were utilized to calculate the mean glandular dose ( MGD ) for 45,054 mammograms from 61 units representing four manufacturers using previously well‐established methods. The 75th and 95th percentiles were calculated across median image MGD s obtained for all included data and according to specific compressed breast thickness ranges. Results The overall median image MGD , minimum, maximum were: 1.39, 0.19 and 10.00 mG y, respectively, the 75th and 95th percentiles across all units’ median image MGD for 60 ± 5 mm compressed breast thickness were 2.06 and 2.69 mG y respectively. Median MGD s, minimum, maximum, 75th and 95th percentiles were presented for nine compressed breast thickness ranges, DRL s for NSW are suggested for the compressed breast thickness range of 60 ± 5 mm for the whole study and three detector technologies CR , DR , and photon counting to be 2.06, 2.22, 2.04 and 0.79 mG y respectively. Conclusion MGD is dependent upon compressed breast thickness and it is recommended that DRL values should be specific to compressed breast thickness and image detector technology.