Digital mammography: physical principles and future applications.

Mammography is currently considered the best tool for the detection of breast cancer, pathology with a rate of incidence in constant increase. To produce the radiological picture a screen film combination is conventionally used. One of the inherent limitations of screen- film combination is the fact that the detection, display and storage processes are one and the same, making it impossible to separately optimize each stage. These limitations can be overcome with digital systems. In this work we evaluate the main characteristics of digital detectors available on the market and we compare the performance of digital and conventional systems. Digital mammography, due to the possibility to process images, offers many potential advantages, among these the possibility to introduce the dual-energy technique which employs the composition of two digital images obtained with two different energies to enhance the inherent contrast of pathologies by removing the uniform background. This technique was previously tested by using synchrotron monochromatic beam and a digital detector, and then the Senographe 2000D full-field digital system manufactured by GE Medical Systems. In this work we present preliminary results and the future applications of this technique.