Abstract: When radiography is performed on a patient at a radiography apparatus, first, a past collected radiation dose for the patient and a past collected radiation dose for a region of the patient on which radiography will be performed are extracted from a database. Judgment is made as to whether the collected radiation doses are greater than or equal to respective set threshold values. If it is judged that at least one of the collected radiation doses is greater than or equal to the set threshold values, the radiography apparatus outputs an alert for a radiographer. If it is judged that the collected radiation doses are less than or equal to the set threshold values, radiography is started by the radiography apparatus.

Abstract: A phantom is provided with: a reference marker at a predetermined position thereof; a positioning reference surface, to be placed into contact with a chest wall abutting surface of a support table of a mammography apparatus; and a pattern region for measuring distances from the reference surface, perpendicular to the reference surface. The amount of transmitted radiation changes within the pattern region in a direction perpendicular to the reference surface according to a predetermined rule. The phantom is placed on the support table to measure the amount of chest wall loss.

Abstract: A pixel value of an evaluation region within a radiation image, which is obtained by imaging a phantom having one or more image quality evaluation patterns formed thereon with a radiation image detector, where at least one of the image quality evaluation patterns is imaged is shading-corrected using a pixel value of an uniformly exposed region adjacent to the evaluation region, and an image quality evaluation/calculation is performed using the shading-corrected pixel value of the evaluation region.

Abstract: A phantom is provided with: a reference marker at a predetermined position thereof; a positioning reference surface, to be placed into contact with a chest wall abutting surface of a support table of a mammography apparatus; and a pattern region for measuring distances from the reference surface, perpendicular to the reference surface. The amount of transmitted radiation changes within the pattern region in a direction perpendicular to the reference surface according to a predetermined rule. The phantom is placed on the support table to measure the amount of chest wall loss.