Investigation of the effect of anode/filter materials on the dose and image quality of a digital mammography system based on an amorphous selenium flat panel detector

A comparison, in terms of image quality and glandular breast dose, was carried out between two similar digital mammography systems using amorphous selenium flat panel detectors. The two digital mammography systems currently available from Lorad-Hologic were compared. The original system utilises Mo/Mo and Mo/Rh as target/filter combinations, while the new system uses W/Rh and W/Ag. Images of multiple mammography phantoms with simulated compressed breast thicknesses of 4 cm, 5 cm and 6 cm and various glandular tissue equivalency were acquired under different spectral conditions. The contrast of five details, corresponding to five glandular compositions, was calculated and the ratio of the square of the contrast-to-noise ratio to the average glandular dose was used as a figure-of-merit (FOM) to compare results. For each phantom thickness and target/filter combination, there is an optimum voltage that maximises the FOM. Results show that the W/Rh combination is the best choice for all the detection tasks studied, but for thicknesses greater than 6 cm the W/Ag combination would probably be the best choice. In addition, the new system with W filter presents a better optimisation of the automatic exposure control in comparison with the original system with Mo filter.