Abstract
For effective breast cancer screening by mammography, it is basically important to produce high-quality mammograms that are suitable for reading. We have stressed the importance of obtaining high-quality clinical mammograms at the study courses held by the Central Committee for Quality Control of Mammographic Screening (CCQCMS), Subcommittee for Education. Although it is desirable that an official learning system will be established for this purpose, this will not be realizable in the near feature. Instead, we have developed our own learning system to improve the quality of mammographic images in an institution that possesses analog or digital mammography equipment.
To attend the learning course, we invited medical doctors and technologists working at institutions with a mammography unit, or those that are not capable of producing high-quality mammograms, and also staff from the manufacturers of the equipment. The course lasted for two full days, including successive Saturday and Sunday. Participants were limited to less than 10 persons per course. Since the main purpose of the course was to learn how to produce improved high-quality mammograms, the programs were designed to consist mainly of actual training in positioning, development, machine control, etc. This kind of training course had been carried out four times by the end of August, 2004. A total of 40 participants attended, including 8 doctors, 24 technologists and 8 others.
It is hoped that when an institution is ready to set up a mammography unit, the institution will fulfill the requirement proposed by the CCQCMS. In order to meet this demand, we hope that not only doctors and technologists who produce and interpret mammograms, but also more staff from the manufacturers of mammography equipment and developing materials will attend the learning course.
