A tutorial on digital mammography imaging equipment: Part 1: advances in image acquisition and display

Abstract

Screen-film mammography is the imaging technique that currently supports referral and screening breast X-ray imaging services in the U.K. Despite its great success, it is now recognized that screen-film mammography (SFM) exhibits a number of physical limitations. These restrict the scope for further developing SFM, to achieve significant improvements in diagnostic image quality and/or reduce patient radiation dose. If correctly implemented, digital mammography may well represent a more effective image recording medium than film. At the same time it may provide a stimulus to mammography diagnosis as we enter a new millennium. At present, the field of digital mammography is experiencing a particularly active and innovative phase of technological development. In due course, this will result in the launch of commercial digital X-ray imaging equipment suitable for mammography. In this tutorial, the most important of these technological developments are introduced and their physical imaging characteristics described. These developments include technologies for direct digital mammographic image acquisition, computerized image enhancement and high resolution softcopy and hardcopy display. In Part 2 of this tutorial (which will appear in the November issue of this journal) developments in digital support technologies such as digital image archival, tele-mammography, and computer assisted diagnosis (CAD) for mammography, will be discussed. Both parts of the tutorial are based upon a set of lecture notes prepared by the author as leader of the ‘ Science and Technology—Mammography ' module of the University of Leeds Masters Degree, MHSc Diagnostic Imaging (Breast Pathway).