Radiation Doses for Mammography and its Relationship with Anthropo-Technical Parameters

Mammography is an x-ray examination of the breast usually done for breast cancer screening and accompanied by further development of both invasive and non-invasive radiological technique used for establishing the diagnosis of palpable and non palpable lesions [1,2]. The major projection for x-ray mammography includes cranio-caudal and mediolateral obliques view. There are two types of patients on whom mammograms are performed: symptomatic women in the clinic and asymptomatic women in breast screening programmes [3,4].The standard technique used for breast imaging are x-ray mammography and real time ultrasonography with Doppler interrogation, magnetic resonance imaging, scintimammography and digital mammography [5]. High quality mammography requires good and functional equipment with highly skilled and well trained radiographers [6]. Breast cancer causes almost half a million deaths in the world per year but early detection has been demonstrated to reduce mortality by up to 30% [7-9]. Measuring radiation dose to the breast has been performed using a variety of approaches including air kerma, entrance skin dose, midbreast dose, total energy transmitted to the breast and the mean glandular dose [6,7]. The average dose absorbed by the glandular tissue was found to be the most effective way of measuring absorbed dose of the breast because the mammary glands are most sensitive to ionizing radiation and to have the highest risk of developing radiation induced carcinogenesis [810]. Mean glandular dose (MGD) is the recommended metric used by many authorities such as International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), United States National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the British Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), the European Council Protocol and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) [11-13].