The purpose of this study is to evaluate the physical characteristics of various apparatus dedicated to mammography: a film-based cassette system and three clinical digital mammography equipments. Their image quality has been assessed, by performing a physical characterization and a contrast-detail analysis. We considered three different FFDM systems: a Computed Radiography unit, the Fuji \u201cFCR 5000 MA Plus\u201d, and two diverse flat-panel units, the indirect conversion a-Si based GE \u201cSenographe 2000D\u201d and the direct conversion a-Se based IMS \u201cGiotto Image MD\u201d. The physical characterization has been estimated, by measuring the MTF, NPS and DQE of the detectors with no anti-scatter grid and in a clinical range of exposures. The contrast-detail analysis has been achieved, by using a CDMAM 3.4 phantom and an in-house made software, for the automatic computation of the contrast-detail curves. The performance of the different systems are presented, in terms of MTF, DQE and contrast-detail curves
