Evaluation of various mammography phantoms for image quality assessment in digital breast tomosynthesis

We investigated the appropriateness of four different mammography phantoms for image quality evaluation in Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT). We tested the CIRS BR3D phantom, the ACR Prototype FFDM Accreditation Phantom, the Penn anthropomorphic breast phantom and the Quart mam/digi EPQC phantom. This work discusses the advantages and shortcomings of each phantom and concludes that none of them, in their current form, can be considered to be adequate as an image quality evaluation phantom for DBT.