The guideline of quality control for screening mammography in Japan

Mammographic image used for breast cancer screening is required to produce high quality images at the lowest radiation dose possible, consistently. In Japan, the quality control manual of the physical and technical aspects for mammography was published by Japan Society of Radiological Technology (JSRT). The manual provides guidance on conducting and evaluating quality control (QC) tests. QC tests are based on recommendations from several organizations. Test Items for quality control are image quality evaluation, kVp accuracy and reproducibility, beam quality assessment (half-value layer measurement), AEC reproducibility, average glandular dose, evaluation of system resolution, etc. In Japan, the Central Committee on Quality Control of Mammographic Screening was established in 1997 for QC of screening mammography. Medical facilities are evaluated with regard to three items: inspection of documents, image evaluation (phantom images and clinical images), and exposure dose evaluation using a glass dosimeter. I'll introduce the quality control system for imaging quality and dose in Japan