Mammography (Sample Exam)

The mammography facility must prominently display a valid certificate issued by the certifying body. If the mammography practice has several locations operating under the same certificate, copies should be made to exhibit in each location.

According to MQSA, the corrective action for a facility who has failed a processor quality control test is that the facility must immediately address the issue.

Quality control tests for phantom images must be performed on a weekly basis. Fixer and retention test and repeat analysis are performed on a quarterly basis. Dark room fog, film-screen contact, and compression quality control tests are performed on a semiannual basis respectively.

Cesium iodide is an ideal material for indirect image capture because of it in inherent property of producing light when exposed to x-ray energy. This process of emitting light is termed scintillation. The layer of cesium iodide that absorbs the x-ray energy and converts it to light is attached to a thin flat panel of photodiodes coated with amorphous silicon, it then coverts it into electrical charges that is converted into digital information.

Tungsten is not a common internal filtration material commonly found in Mammography units.  Molybdenum, Rhodium and Silver all are common internal filtration materials found in common Mammography units.

Silver is not a common target material. Molybdenum, Rhodium, and Tungsten are common target materials.

The two (2) reasons are: For the ease of patient positioning, and some mammography units recognize the paddle size and automatically selects the appropriate pixel matrix. Using the incorrect paddle size can affect how the image is displayed on the work station monitor.

Peau d’ orange refers to the skin thickening in dimpling associated with lymphatic edema of the breast.

The x-ray beam is directed from the superomedial to the inferolateral aspect of the breast. To restate in another way, the beam is directed from the lower outer aspect to the upper inner aspect of the breast.

If the hand supporting the breast is removed too soon during compression, the breast will droop resulting in inadequate separation of tissue. The “out-and-up” maneuver is necessary to prevent a downward sloping breast.