Level and Distribution of the Radiation Dose to the Population from a Mammography Screening Programme in New Zealand

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Abstract
The Otago Southland Breast Screening Programme offers biennial mammography to 19,000 eligible women on the South Island of New Zealand. A Quality Assurance programme ensures that international performance standards are met, in particular the radiation dose for a mammogram of a 5 cm CIRS-X phantom is 1.7 mGy and careful retake analysis undertaken. This however does not reveal the absorbed dose received by individuals, nor how this varies between individuals. Machine parameters and compressed breast thickness for each film were recorded for 310 women who attended one centre during the three months ending February 1993 and absorbed doses calculated using Monte Carlo data. The mean compressed breast thickness for the 310 women was 4.9 cm, doses received for individual films ranged from 0.7 to 8.5 mGy while patient total doses were in the range 4 to 29 mGy with 75% of women receiving a dose of 7.1 mGy or less.

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