Monte Carlo simulation of a mammographic test phantom
1 Department of Physics, The Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London SW3 6JJ, UK
2 University Institute for Applied Radiophysics, Grand-Pré 1 CH-1007 Lausanne, Switzerland
3 Department of Radiation Physics, IMV, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, SE-58185 Linköping, Sweden
* Corresponding author: david.dance{at}rmh.nthames.nhs.uk
A test phantom, including a wide range of mammographic tissue equivalent materials and test details, was imaged on a digital mammographic system. In order to quantify the effect of scatter on the contrast obtained for the test details, calculations of the scatter-to-primary ratio (S/P) have been made using a Monte Carlo simulation of the digital mammographic imaging chain, grid and test phantom. The results show that the S/P values corresponding to the imaging conditions used were in the range 0.084–0.126. Calculated and measured pixel values in different regions of the image were compared as a validation of the model and showed excellent agreement. The results indicate the potential of Monte Carlo methods in the image quality–patient dose process optimisation, especially in the assessment of imaging conditions not available on standard mammographic units.