The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the American College of Radiology's (ACR) alternative standard request for use of the new Digital Mammography Quality Control (QC) Manual and Digital Mammography QC Phantom in routine QC of digital equipment.
The FDA requires that all digital mammography facilities perform quality control for approved imaging systems according to manufacturers' manuals. The approval of this alternative standard will enable mammography QC technologists and medical physicists to use the new ACR manual in lieu of manufacturers' quality control manuals.
The FDA alternative standard specifies that the new manual may only be used for full-field digital mammography systems without advanced imaging capabilities, such as tomosynthesis or contrast enhancement.
The manual currently is undergoing preparation for publication and should be available this spring.











![A normal mammogram confirmed by three-year radiologic follow-up illustrates reader-marked regions of interest (ROIs) during (A) unaided (round 1) and (B) artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted (round 2) reading. Each colored dot represents an ROI for recall by a human reader. Readers could mark more than one ROI per case, represented by multiple dots of the same color. During AI-assisted reading, the AI system displayed three visible prompts: two with suspicion of malignancy scores of 35% (left mediolateral oblique [L MLO] and craniocaudal [L CC]) and one with a suspicion of malignancy score of 10% (right craniocaudal [R CC]), shown as polygonal overlays. Without AI, six of 10 readers (60%) marked a false-positive ROI. With AI assistance, this fell to two of 10 (20%). R MLO = right mediolateral oblique.](https://img.auntminnie.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/07/2026-07-14-radiology-mammogram-ai-auto-bias.H0bYO8QlWs.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=crop&h=112&q=70&w=112)






