The American College of Radiology (ACR) on July 18 released an updated frequently asked questions document for its 2016 ACR Digital Mammography QC Manual Resources webpage.
The document's biggest change is guidelines for failing phantom images due to artifacts. Quality control technologists, medical physicists, and ACR phantom reviewers should sign off on the phantom image if there is a clinically significant artifact in a location that could affect interpretation -- even if all fibers, speck groups, and masses pass, according to the ACR.
The change was made because reviewers noted that phantom images submitted for accreditation would occasionally contain artifacts that would not prompt failure because they did not obscure test objects in the old phantom, the college said.











![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)






