Development and validation of a novel measure of adverse patient positioning in mammography

Highlights: • First known use of Rasch analysis for clinical image quality measurement. • Good measurement properties shown for new mammography adverse positioning measure. • Preliminary evidence: adverse positioning related to patient BMI and radiographer. • No relationship detected between adverse positioning score and mammography pain. • Rasch analysis for measure development/validation has merit in radiology research. The primary aim was to develop and validate a novel mammography positioning measure, specifically incorporating parameters which might relate to mammography pain. We then explored relationships between the new adverse positioning score and (1) pain; (2) patient and technique factors.