LAUSR

Purpose The recent publication “Supplement to European Guidelines”, version 1.0, 2013, (S1), has reviewed the tests for quality assurance of digital mammographic equipment. The majority of the tests considered as essential or desirable regard the detector and the resulting quality of the images. The analyses are very demanding if no suitable tools for the automatic analysis of the images are available. The authors developed a free prototype of such a tool to be improved with the practise and the feedbacks of the possible users. Methods MaMMoS1 is a homemade software for analyzing mammographic digital images. It was written in MATLAB® but it does not require Matlab installed on the computer. It was developed at our facilities for helping us in our routine quality controls. In the intention of the authors it would be a starting platform that should be improved by feedback and suggestions from the users. Currently it performs the following test-items described in S1: (Essential) 2b.2.2.1.1 Response function/2b.2.2.1.2 Noise evaluation. 2b.2.1.3.5 AEC Breast thickness and composition compensation. 2b.2.2.3.1 Image receptor homogeneity. 2b.2.4.5 Ghost image/erasure thoroughness. (Desirable) 2b.2.1.3.6 Local dense area. It can be downloaded at: https://www.fisicamedica.it/gruppi/gruppo-regionale/toscana . Instructions for the installation and use of the software are given in a readme file. Results The software has been routinely applied proving useful for the calculation of the requested parameters. Each test requires no more than a few seconds. It is possible to process images on site and so it is possible to identify defective performance soon after the measurements, possibly apply corrective procedures and repeat the test. Conclusions The introduction of MaMMoS1 in our quality assurance program has allowed economic and human resources savings as a considerable amount of time during each check can be saved. It can be updated to include additional analysis and tools to make the quality checks faster and easier for the user. The detector performances, homogeneity, response function, ghost, and noise, can be fully explored so the software can be used for digital detector of other modalities with respect to mammography an in the future include additional more specific features. Download : Download high-res image (208KB) Download : Download full-size image