In the past, "screen-film" mammography was the only way to create a mammogram.

In screen-film mammography, x-ray beams are captured on a film cassette. An x-ray processor in a dark room develops the film. The films are then displayed for review on a high intensity light box as you see in the photo below.
 


The Selenia full field digital mammography system at Burbank Imaging uses computers and specially designed digital detectors to produce an image that can be displayed on high-resolution computer monitors.

The Selenia system uses a detector that's made with "amorphous selenium". This detector directly converts x-rays into an image.
There is no film involved.

 This technology improves the sharpness of images by completely eliminating the image degrading
effect of "light diffusion" which is inherent to film and "film-screen" mammography.

The Selenia digital system, from Hologic, also offers a larger detector size than was possible with film systems.

Our digital system's dectector can accommodate almost all breast sizes in a single exposure.

  
 
Digital mammography images can be viewed in seconds, allowing the mammographer to confirm proper positioning.

The images are sent to a special, high-resolution, dedicated review station which you can see in the photo above.

The physician can adjust the brightness, change the contrast, and magnify specific areas of interest. Being able to manipulate images is one of the main benefits of digital technology.

In fact, there is more information in the data set of the digital image that can be viewed on the screen at one time.

The physician can manipulate the images to sample all the values in the data set.

Masses tend to persist in the lower end of data values while glandular tissue tends to fade.
 

 

 

As you can see in the image at the left, digital mammography provides better penetration and delineation of dense breast tissue.

Digital mammography is superb at detecting microcalcifications in the breast. These microcalcifications are sometimes a sign of early cancer.

The areas in the breast close to the skin and adjacent to the chest wall are much better visualized by digital mammography than conventional "film-screen" mammography.

However, despite the better penetration, masses in dense breast tissue are not always detected by x-ray and breast ultrasound still plays an important complimentary role in breast health.