European Guidelines for quality control in digital mammography specify minimum and achievable standards of image quality in terms of threshold contrast, based on readings of images of the CDMAM test object by human observers. However the methodology is time-consuming and has large inter- and intra-observer error. To overcome these problems a software program is available to automatically read CDMAM images. An alternative approach would be to predict threshold contrast from measurements of DQE and MTF using a model of the imaging process. A simple signal-matched noise-integration model has been used to predict the contrast detail response of five different types of commercial digital mammography system (Siemens Inspiration, GE Senographe DS, and three types of Konica Minolta computerised radiography system). Measurements were made of the MTF and DQE of each detector and the noise equivalent apertures calculated. For each system sets of 16 images of the CDMAM test object were acquired at a range of dose levels and contrast-detail plots obtained using human observers and automated reading. The theoretically and experimentally determined threshold contrasts were compared. An encouragingly good level of agreement was found between the experimental data and theoretical predictions.
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