Figure 5c. (a-c) Images of a breast phantom obtained with an SFM system by using automatic exposure control (b), using one-half of the milliampere-seconds value (a), and using double the milliampere-seconds value (c). The images are displayed on a high-luminance view box. (d-f) Corresponding images obtained with a full-field digital mammography (FFDM) system. The effect of underexposure on image quality is increasing noise, whereas overexposure decreases noise at the expense of longer exposure and higher breast dose. With the digital mammograms (d-f), underexposure and overexposure do not affect image contrast.