Experience with the European quality assurance guidelines for digital mammography systems in a national screening programme

• Published in: Radiation protection dosimetry 2013-02, Vol.153 (2), p.223-226
• Main Authors: McCullagh, J, Keavey, E, Egan, G, Phelan, N
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Automatic Data Processing; Automation; Data Collection; Early Detection of Cancer - methods; Europe; Female; Humans; Ireland; Mammography - methods; Mammography - standards; Mass Screening - methods; Middle Aged; Phantoms, Imaging; Quality Assurance, Health Care - standards; Quality Control; Radiographic Image Enhancement - instrumentation; Radiographic Image Enhancement - methods; Reproducibility of Results; Software
• ISSN: 1742-3406
• DOI: 10.1093/rpd/ncs297

The transition to a fully digital breast screening programme, utilising three different full-field digital mammography (FFDM) systems has presented many challenges to the implementation of the European guidelines for physico-technical quality assurance (QA) testing. An analysis of the QA results collected from the FFDM systems in the screening programme over a 2-y period indicates that the three different systems have similar QA performances. Generally, the same tests were failed by all systems and failure rates were low. The findings provide some assurance that the QA guidelines are being correctly implemented. They also suggest that there is more scope for the development of the relevance of the guidelines with respect to modern FFDM systems. This study has also shown that a summary review of the QA data can be achieved by simple organisation of the QA data storage and by automation of data query and retrieval using commonly available software.