Mammography dose estimates do not reflect any specific patient's breast dose

It is with great interest that we read the article by Gennaro et al published recently in this journal [ 1 ]. It is clear that the introduction of the European Directive 2013/59/Euratom transposition has brought forth a need to evaluate the appropriateness and real meaning of many of the dosimetry estimates used every day in our field. It is therefore of great value that work such as this one is done, in which we can actually gauge the level of accuracy that we can expect from common dose estimates. This is especially true for the values provided by the imaging systems themselves, that tend to form part of the official record, in the form of specific DICOM tags in image headers and/or in Radiation Dose Structured Reports (RDSRs). As demonstrated by the authors, it is encouraging that “the best accuracy” metric “that can be calculated” shows that the system-calculated organ dose has an overall mean relative difference of only 8.7%, making this automated calculated metric suitable for most of the purposes listed in the European Directive.