277. A software toolset for quality control in digital mammography and DBT

Abstract

Purpose The aim is to introduce a software toolset compliant with European protocols for quality control of physical and technical aspects of mammography screening (2DFFDM) and Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) Systems. Methods The toolset is developed as a suite of plugins of the well-known free software ImageJ. The mammographic systems under study are Hologic Selenia Value+ and Siemens Mammomat Inspiration PRIME and the ARTINIS EU DBT Test Set is used to perform QC sessions. IQWorks and OBJ_IQ softwares are used to investigate the consistence for NPS and MTF values while the plugins for analysis of the remaining parameters are directly derived from EUREF guidelines. Results The toolset allows full analysis of the parameters specified in european protocols, especially AEC steps and short term reproducibility, AEC long term reproducibility by SNR referred to 2D ROI and 3D voxel, SDNR, local dense area, image receptor response function, noise, image receptor homogeneity and stability based on 2D ROI and 3D voxel calculation, detector elements failure through text files analysis for visualization and comparison of bad pixel map, uncorrected defective detector elements, inter plate sensitivity variations, AGD from DICOM headers, MTF with edge and wire techniques, NPS from 2DFFDM images, NPS for full 3DDBT slices as well as by extraction. The toolset also evaluates distortions and tilt of the reconstructed 3DDBT planes. The sorting and renaming of a set of dicom images based on their acquisition time or slice position and the evaluation of homogeneity in every DBT focal plane (PV, variance, SNR variations) are also achievable. Conclusions The aim is to introduce a software toolset compliant with European protocols for quality control of physical and technical aspects of mammography screening (2DFFDM) and Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) Systems. The toolset is developed as a suite of plugins of the well-known free software ImageJ. The mammographic systems under study are Hologic Selenia Value+ and Siemens Mammomat Inspiration PRIME and the ARTINIS EU DBT Test Set is used to perform QC sessions. IQWorks and OBJ_IQ softwares are used to investigate the consistence for NPS and MTF values while the plugins for analysis of the remaining parameters are directly derived from EUREF guidelines. The toolset allows full analysis of the parameters specified in european protocols, especially AEC steps and short term reproducibility, AEC long term reproducibility by SNR referred to 2D ROI and 3D voxel, SDNR, local dense area, image receptor response function, noise, image receptor homogeneity and stability based on 2D ROI and 3D voxel calculation, detector elements failure through text files analysis for visualization and comparison of bad pixel map, uncorrected defective detector elements, inter plate sensitivity variations, AGD from DICOM headers, MTF with edge and wire techniques, NPS from 2DFFDM images, NPS for full 3DDBT slices as well as by extraction. The toolset also evaluates distortions and tilt of the reconstructed 3DDBT planes. The sorting and renaming of a set of dicom images based on their acquisition time or slice position and the evaluation of homogeneity in every DBT focal plane (PV, variance, SNR variations) are also achievable.