[Intl_DxMedPhys] Canadian Mammo Beam Quality References

[Robert Morrison]

Nicole,

I am not aware of any different standards within Canada than what are in the US or any other country for that matter for measuring mammographic dose.  When I worked for RTI Electronics the standard for MQSA was that your calibration lab had to be certified every two years via NIST which meant that our cal lab had to receive a chamber from NIST, typically we asked to be sent one of their Radcal 6M chambers and we had to calibrate it in our lab for specific beam quality standards using our chambers which were calibrated to the IEC beam quality standards and then we would send it back to them and they would recalibrate it as well.  The mGy/nC factor would have to be within 2% to pass.  We were always less than 1%.  All of our reference chambers at that time were calibrated at PTB in Germany every two years.  We sent them to PTB because they were less expensive than NIST for the calibration and they had all the IEC beam qualities for the different target and filter combinations whereas NIST at that time did not.  You can find all of those IEC beam qualities along with many others located here https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ptb.de/cms/fileadmin/internet/fachabteilungen/abteilung_6/6.2/6.25/ptb_rad_qual_2015_01_07.pdf__;!!KGKeukY!wkJgOuSSGYsm9nyoOLDNgQkvVWGB-vzLYYOh7lJB6YXIW_g21uvMY7uIT2TgZ8EZ1LBStOr2YbqVk2p6s631ubfVvku4nY9uqTxAP7OTMqWj$   with the mammo beam qualities located on pages 9 - 19.

At the end I would think whatever electrometer and ion chambers/solid state detectors you are using, as long as they are calibrated in a lab that has proper reference detectors for calibrating their equipment that you should be good.  The Radcal 6M, which was the reference everyone used, but others like the Keithly 15 cc and the PTW chambers and Standard Imaging chambers and IBA chambers should be good.  Many of the ion chambers had no real change in their factor for the using them on all the different target/filter combinations when it came to energy/filtration dependence.  The Radcal 6M was one of the best for being so flat through the whole energy range along with no filtration depedence.  Others were as well.  Of course the solid state did have issues but if their energy dependence is known and corrected whether automatically via the hardware/software or manually they would measure correctly as well.

Whether this is helpful to you or not I am not sure.  But I cannot see Canada doing anything any different than any other country when it comes to measuring the mammo dose accurately given all the different mammography units out there with their multitude of target/filter combinations.

Rob

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From: Intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list <intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list-bounces+robpmorrison=gmail.com at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Nicole Ranger via Intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list <intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2026 10:05 AM
To: DxMedPhys List <intl_dxmedphys_wd_osu_list at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: [Intl_DxMedPhys] Canadian Mammo Beam Quality References


Canadian MPs:

I’m looking for guidance on beam quality references used for calibrating Mammo ion chambers. Radcal/IBA indicate there is a separate standard for devices used for testing in Canada and I’m needing guidance on what to specify.  When in the U.S. I specified MQSA compliant but that is not applicable here.

TIA
Nicole Ranger

Sent from my iPhone
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