Computer Assisted Quality Control and Telemammography.

This purpose of this project, DAMD17-93-J-3015 was to develop systems to enable the integration of mammography into MDIS for digital storage and soft copy display, to allow the acquisition of mammograms in facilities remote from the radiologist who will interpret the images, to develop automated methods of quality control of image quality and to develop methods for the teletransmission of digital mammograms. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of digital mammography using a direct digital method, but in our tests, digitized film was inadequate for diagnosis. We have developed a system for the teletransmission of mammograms that results in hard copy display of adequate diagnostic quality. We have developed a computerized system for the detection of under and over-exposure of mammograms for both digitized screen film mammograms and digitally captured mammograms. We were unable to devise a system for the soft copy display of mammography that provided adequate quality for soft copy interpretation. Implementation with a Fuji FCR 9000 with image processing parameters that we have optimized and printed as hard copy on a 3M 969 laser printer is feasible. Deprad, which is a product of the Analogics Corporation that we helped to design, is a suitable method for teledigital mammography.