The Sensitivity to Technological Innovations of the Doses Delivered by Optimized Mammography Systems

Multiparameter optimizations have been carried out to study the effects of hypothetical technological advances on the patient doses required to maintain a given image quality in mammography. The assumed advances include: improvement in the power loading limits of the tube focal spot, increased absorption efficiency for a given detector resolution, increases in detector system gain, and changes in the exposure time limitations that result from patient motion. The optimization permits system geometry, kVp of the examination, filtration, detector resolution, focal spot size, and grid characteristics to vary simultaneously and self-consistently subject to image quality as well as technological constraints. The effects of technological innovations were measured by systematically varying the technological constraints to reflect hypothetical improvements and comparing the resulting minimized doses, required to maintain constant image quality, to a baseline optimized system derived from a set of baseline technological capabilities.