Mammography is an X-ray imaging application used for breast diagnosis. Its high importance is denoted by the routinely mammographic examinations suggested for women above a certain age. In the era of digital mammography, various dedicated detector designs have been considered for possible use in a mammographic system. Despite, the detector characteristics the image of thick or dense breasts is a challenge since the amount of radiation transmitted through the breast and incident at the detector surface is a function of the ionizing radiation energy and exposure. In addition, possible breast lesions may be visible or not depending upon their size and composition. In general, a large size and high atomic number lesion has higher visibility than a small size and low atomic number one. A simple mathematical breast phantom was designed which was comprised from breast tissue as a background material and areas corresponding to a) blood for low atomic number material and b) Ca for a high atomic number material like microcalcifications. The phantom dimensions were 1000×1000 pixels, while the lesions were constructed as squares ranging from 2x2 pixels up to 50×50 pixels and lines. The breast thicknesses considered were 5.2 cm and 6 cm for the phantom. For the Ca the thicknesses ranged from 0.0008 cm up to 0.01 cm and for the blood lesions from 0.08 cm up to 0.5 cm. Simulations of the irradiated with 22 keV and 28 keV X-ray photons for different photon fluences, which after transmission from the phantom they have been assumed to impinge a Dexela mammographic detector, have been performed. It was found that at 22 keV and 6 cm breast thickness the 0.003 cm, 10×10 Ca lesion could be observed as well as the 20×20 blood lesion of 0.2 cm thickness. The increase of photon fluence improved the derived image due to the decrease of the image noise levels. The 5.2 cm thickness irradiation conditions produced less noisy images due to the higher number of photons impinging on the detector surface.

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