Physical and dosimetric characterisation of different Contrast-Enhanced digital mammographic systems: A multicentric study.

Purpose: Contrast-enhanced digital mammography (CEDM) is a relatively new imaging technique recombining low- and high-energy mammograms to emphasise iodine contrast. This work aims to perform a multicentric physical and dosimetric characterisation of four state-of-the-art CEDM systems.

Methods: We evaluated tube output, half-value-layer (HVL) for low- and high-energy and average glandular dose (AGD) in a wide range of equivalent breast thicknesses.

A comparative study of physical image quality in digital and synthetic mammography from commercially available mammography systems.

We present a comparison between full field digital mammography and synthetic mammography, performed on several mammography systems from four different manufacturers. The analysis is carried out on both the digital and synthetic images of two commercially available mammography phantoms, and focuses on a set of objective metrics that encode the geometrical appearance of imaging features of diagnostic interest. In particular, we measured sizes and contrasts of several clusters of microcalcification specks, shapes and contrasts of circular masses, and the power spectrum of background regions mimicking the heterogeneous texture of the breast parenchyma.

Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT): recommendations from the Italian College of Breast Radiologists (ICBR) by the Italian Society of Medical Radiology (SIRM) and the Italian Group for Mammography Screening (GISMa).

This position paper, issued by ICBR/SIRM and GISMa, summarizes the evidence on DBT and provides recommendations for its use. In the screening setting, DBT in adjunct to digital mammography (DM) increased detection rate by 0.5-2.

Recommendations for breast imaging follow-up of women with a previous history of breast cancer: position paper from the Italian Group for Mammography Screening (GISMa) and the Italian College of Breast Radiologists (ICBR) by SIRM.

Women who were previously treated for breast cancer (BC) are an important particular subgroup of women at intermediate BC risk. Their breast follow-up should be planned taking in consideration a 1.0-1.

Different architectures of creativity: Louis and Nathaniel Kahn.

The author analyzes Nathaniel Kahn's documentary film My Architect: A Son's Journey, a tribute to the writer-director's father Louis, the famous architect, who died suddenly when Nathaniel was eleven years old. The film's poetic, evocative images form a testimony to the silent working through that Nathaniel did in searching for his lost father and to the complex intertwining of mourning and creativity. Creativity is seen as both the cause and the effect of working through, as it gives life to a new meaning and allows replacement of the lost object by an object found again.

An entire life in one glance: a psychoanalytic reading of Revolutionary Road.

This article, starting from an analysis of the film Revolutionary Road (2009; director, Sam Mendes), addresses the topic of conflictuality in relationships between couples, especially in those characterized by intense violence and a relational configuration of the sadomasochistic type. In particular, the film - in highlighting sequential moments in the couple's life, from its formation through to its tragic conclusion - seems to strengthen the hypothesis that the specific quality of falling in love is a contributing factor in determining the dramatic unfolding of a couple's relationship. The relationship is characterized by an experience of intense, erotic sensoriality, and by the nature of the unconscious fantasy underlying the bond between the couple that began with the moment of falling in love, a bond in which deep needs for fusion predominate.

Physical and psychophysical characterization of a novel clinical system for digital mammography.

Purpose: In recent years, many approaches have been investigated on the development of full-field digital mammography detectors and implemented in practical clinical systems. Some of the most promising techniques are based on flat panel detectors, which, depending on the mechanism involved in the x-ray detection, can be grouped into direct and indirect flat panels. Direct detectors display a better spatial resolution due to the direct conversion of x rays into electron-hole pairs, which do not need an intermediate production of visible light.