Text: Mary Kimani
Timo Liimatainen, a board-certified hospital physicist at Oulu University Hospital conducted a quality check and assurance for FeniX. In his line of work, Timo has done quality check for many different imaging solutions.
Quality assurance is essential for compliance with federal and international standards. It is of great importance to ensure ongoing quality, safety and effectiveness of a medical device.
“Jouni Ihme, CEO at Innomentarium Oy reached out to me for a quality check and assurance for FeniX. Part of this quality check was to compare FeniX with a well-known mammography system brand”, says Liimatainen.
“In comparison to the other brand used during this process, there were some differences in features for example, sharpness of the image”, he continues. According to him, FeniX stood out in some features while the other brand did well in others. However, the overall image quality was quite similar.
The high level of performance required in mammography is a challenge for digital technology. Few specific parameters are important for a good mammo detector “In a mammography, high image quality with low patient dose are the most important properties”, Liimatainen says.
When imaging is used for screening large amount of people, also the radiation dose will become an important issue. The sensitivity of the detector for radiation is an important parameter which will provide good quality images with low radiation dose. “The Fenix detector showed a very good performance on low tube voltages. This is one indicator of good quality”, Liimatainen tells.
Resolution, noise, and lack of artefacts are the main measures of good image quality. Resolution describes the ability of medical imaging process to discriminate adjacent structures in organ tissues being examined. Signal from detected photon should be recorded with enough resolution in space, intensity and possibly time to produce a digital image that enables a medical interpretation of tissue structure and function.
Therefore, resolution is of three main categories, spatial resolution (space), contrast resolution (intensity) and temporal resolution (time). “All these important aspects were taken into consideration while assessing FeniX and the results were positive”, Liimatainen concludes.