Qualidade de imagem em mamografia: apresentação do músculo grande peitoral na incidência oblíqua médio-lateral

ABSTRACT: The mammography technique is, currently, the most reliable imaging method for the diagnoses of breast cancer, and for this reason it is essential the production of mammograms with high quality and consistency. Considering that the goal of mammography is to maximize the visualization of breast tissue, the aim of this work is to explore the presentation of the pectoral major muscle in the mammographic image.  We intended to assess the relationship between the technical procedures of the image acquisition and the presentation of the muscle, according to the current mammography quality criteria. The mammograms were collected from two reference hospitals in Porto, and thereafter, the image processing and statistics analysis was performed to assess qualitative and quantitative indicators of the image quality. In general, analyzing both clinical institution and based on these indicators, the hospital that uses a fixed angulation of the potter-bucky apart the patient's body habitus presented better results. This indicates that the existence of failures due to positioning errors is smaller when compared to the quality standard assessed. It was found, therefore, that the angulation of the potter-bucky device has a relevant and statistical significance on the quality of the mammographic images produced.