The characteristics of the SYRMEP imaging system have been studied on samples such as phantoms and, above all, partial or complete breast tissue specimens.

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   A digital radiiography of a given sample with the SYRMEP system is obtained as follows. The sample is placed on an holder between beam and detector, which are kept fixed with respect to each other. After selecting a proper beam energy, the scanning movement step of the sample through the beam is determined according to the dimensions of the smallest detail to be imaged. Typical scanning steps are 100 mm and 50 mm. The total acceptable radiation dose delivered to the sample also determines the scanning step.

 
    Image acquisition is computer-controlled: a program controls the sample scan, by means of software instructions sent to a stepping motor controller, and synchronizes this movement with the read-out electronics. The final result stored in the computer memory is a matrix each element of which represents the number of photons to be assigned to a given image pixel. These raw data are then transferred to a second computer for further processing: after normalization, to take into account gain differences among read-out electronics channels, the typical operation is a setting of the scale of grays. This, for instance, can increase contrast in the raw image and enhance details with different densities.