Dose reduction options by monochromatic X-rays

Dose reduction in X-ray based medical diagnostics is essentially important in screening applications such as mammography where a large number of potentially healthy people are exposed to ionizing radiation. Several novel concepts of compact X-ray sources with a very narrow (quasimonochromatic) spectral bandwidth are under development, and their use in diagnostic systems of the future may have strong impact on the patient dose. The study presented here is based on simulations and predicts a significant dose reduction achievable in a mammography-Iike scenario.