Kodak reveals details on full-field digital mammography system

Jul 31, 2001

LAS VEGAS - Eastman Kodak Health Imaging today announced plans to market a full-field digital mammography (FFDM) system based on amorphous selenium technology. The Rochester, NY, company revealed details about the system at this week’s American Healthcare Radiology Administrators (AHRA) meeting.

A work-in-progress FFDM system is currently undergoing prototype trials at an undisclosed location, according to Kodak marketing director Jane Hasselkus. Kodak first mentioned the project at last year’s Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) show in Chicago.

The FFDM unit is based on the same amorphous selenium technology used in Kodak’s line of digital radiography (DR) systems for general radiography. However, Kodak has a new source for the amorphous selenium used in the FFDM system.

In-house tests show that the new material is producing an 85-micron pixel pitch, according to Hasselkus. This compares favorably to the 100-micron pitch found on Waukesha, WI-based GE’s Senographe 2000D, an amorphous silicon system that is currently the only FFDM system on the market. Kodak’s tests are also demonstrating significantly less noise in the amorphous selenium-based images when compared with similar images taken from amorphous silicon and charge-coupled device technologies, she said.

Current plans for the product have Kodak starting clinical trials at three locations by the fourth quarter of 2002. The company has had talks with the FDA, Hasselkus said, but has not yet applied for premarket authorization (PMA) of the FFDM system.

Kodak said it is studying a two-pronged approach for bringing the product to market: The company would sell both a complete FFDM system and a retrofit to existing mammography systems. The integration of the various components will be handled by Peabody, MA-based Analogic, Hasselkus said.

The complete system will feature an x-ray generator, digital detector, operator console, digital storage unit, a DryView 8610 laser imager for printing images, and computer-aided detection (CAD) capabilities. Hasselkus said studies are underway at the company to retrofit existing Kodak film mammography systems for the digital equipment.

"We’re using a lot of the work we’ve done in CR and DR in the digital mammography system. In addition to robust image processing algorithms, the units will feature a similar user interface so that a technician, trained on one of these systems, will easily be able to cross-train on another system," Hasselkus said. The company will demonstrate the product’s user interface, as well as sample images from a prototype system, at the November RSNA conference in Chicago, she added.

Kodak is not yet ready to disclose pricing or throughput on the system. The company is looking for early adoption of the technology by research centers, and then hoping that mammography centers in larger metropolitan areas will embrace the product. The expected selling points will be the product's efficiency and its direct-to-digital imaging capability.

Kodak chose the AHRA show to exhibit its work on FFDM in order to obtain feedback from the radiology administrators attending the conference. "Who better to provide insight on functionality and features than the administrators who will be using our products?" Hasselkus said.

By Jonathan S. Batchelor
AuntMinnie.com staff writer
August 1, 2001