A glass-ceramic plate for mammography

We developed translucent glass-ceramic image plates for digital mammography. The glass ceramics are based on europium-doped fluorozirconate glasses, which were additionally doped with chlorine to initiate the nucleation of barium chloride nanoparticles therein. The X-ray image is stored in the form of stable electron-hole pairs, which can be read out afterwards with a scanning laser beam in a photostimulated luminescence (PSL) process. Measurements of the required stimulating exposure, integrated PSL signal, and optical light spreading of the stimulating laser light were performed to allow projection of the detective quantum efficiency (DQE) for the proposed X-ray storage phosphor system. The projected DQE is compared with commercially available electronic mammography systems.