Quality Control Tests in a Mammographic Unit Using a Homemade Ionization Chamber

An important modality of radiation diagnosis is the mammography that is a diagnostic tool to detect breast cancer in an initial stage as well as the tumor localization for treatment. It is essential that the mammographic unit follows an accurate quality control program to assure the image quality, and patient and staff radiation protection. The ionization chambers play an important role in the quality control of mammographic units, because they are the reference detectors for calibration purposes. In this work a homemade double faced ionization chamber developed at IPEN, Brazil, was used to perform some quality control tests in a mammographic unit. All results obtained were within international recommendations.