Breast dose in conventional and digital mamography

Introduction: The amount of doses received in mammography is one of the biggest concerns in the world. According to some statistics, every 12 minutes a woman dies due to breast cancer. Mammography concerned to detect breast cancer at an early stage of the disease as well as for screening, however due to the risk of exposure, the increasingly and widespread use of mammography for breast cancer screening is a controversial subject. This research was done to compare the breast dose in the conventional and digital mammography devices that used in mammography centers in Tabriz city on 1395.   Materials and Methods: This research is a descriptive study. In the first three mammograms, according to the instructions of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) for quality control were tested. Information about 322 patients who for mammography went to four centers over four months were collected, then the values of average dose of mammary glands in the mammogram images as milli-Gray (mGy) were calculated and analyzed.   Results: In the 4 clinics, the mean values of compressed tissue thickness in the conventional mammography device for CC and MLO were 4.01 ± 0.92 cm and 4.49 ± 1.63 cm and the dose values were 1.53 ± 0.58 mGy and 1.58 ± 0.59 mGy respectivel, P-value that received is 1. Also the mean values of compressed tissue thickness in digital mammography device for CC and MLO were 5.8 ± 1.00 cm and 6.30 ± 1.01 cm and the dose values 2.07 ± 0.71 mGy and 2.15 ± 0.69 mGy were obtained respectively and also p-value is received 0.925.   Conclusion: According to this study, it seems that despite the benefits of digital mammography on the conventional mammography, digital mammography device has more average absorbed dose rather than conventional mammography device. Due to the higher absorbed dose, doing of regular quality control and dose reduction techniques are recommended in digital mammography.