Analysis of the significance of scattered radiation in reduced dose mammography, including magnification effects, scatter suppression, and focal spot and detector blurring.

A systems analysis of reduced dose mammography with scatter removal has quantitatively specified the relationships between the several parameters in mammography systems. While the results are only preliminary in the sense that they need to be proven experimentally, they do seem to provide a good feel for the nature of the important trade-offs. The major uncertainties in the analysis probably have to do with the formal equivalence, that is implicit in the aperture theory, between large area and detail contrast, as well as the output versus focal spot relationship that was adopted. Also, there are important questions about specifying motion unsharpness as a function of exposure time in mammography examinations.