Purpose: Although breast compression has been an efficient practice to reduce the breast dose in mammography, there may be some differences between analog and digital systems. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dose-reduction efficiency by breast compression in digital mammography under its own criterion that signal difference-to-noise ratio (SDNR) be kept at a certain value.
Method: By adopting SDNR as an image quality indicator and average glandular dose (AGD) as a dose indicator, we measured SDNR versus AGD relationship for each breast depth. Then by utilizing figure of merit (FOM), we calculated the breast depth that we had to reduce for halving the breast dose while keeping the SDNR.
Result: To halve the dose, 1.49 cm compression was necessary for 0% breast density, 1.25 cm for 50%, and 1.06 cm for 100%.
Conclusion: Through FOM analysis, we quantitatively revealed the dose-reduction efficiency by breast compression in digital mammography.
Keywords: average glandular dose; breast compression; digital mammography; figure of merit; signal difference-to-noise ratio.