Patient Dose, Image Quality and Radiographic Techniques for Common X ray Examinations in Greece and Comparison with the European Guidelines

Abstract

The radiographic technique factors and the quality of each radiographic image for three common examinations (chest PA, pelvis AP and lumbar spine LAT) were compared with the European criteria and entrance surface dose (ESD) was measured for each radiograph in two Greek hospitals. The measurements were carried out using calibrated LiF thermoluminescence dosemeters. The patients were selected so that their weight was close to 70 +/- 10 kg and their height to 170 +/- 10 cm. Effective dose values were calculated using a PC-based Monte Carlo program. All four X ray rooms in the survey achieved mean doses well below the European reference doses. However the mean doses in the X ray rooms differed by a factor of about 3.

Radiation dose in vertebroplasty

“…The radiation risk to the radiologist is therefore high; the absorbed dose might cause deterministic dosedependent damage. There are reports on radiation exposure to the operator in neurodiagnostic and interventional procedures [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], but to our knowledge none is available concerning vertebroplasty procedures. Our aim was therefore to measure the absorbed radiation dose during fluoroscopically controlled vertebroplasty and to evaluate the possibility of deterministic radiation effects to the operator.…”

Evaluation of exposure parameters in plain radiography: a comparative study with European guidelines

“…Compared with CEC guidelines observations show an inadequate selection of exposure parameters. Other studies also demonstrate a wide variation in exposure parameters (12) . This could configure a practice of overexposure and collected data suggest that entrance skin dose (ESD) could be above the reference value in several projections since long exposure times are observed in most projections.…”

Dose Optimization for the Quality Control Tests of X-Ray Equipment

“…There are a number of recent studies about dose optimization. Some of them are the surveys about image quality and patient dose in radiographic examinations in the authors' countries (Bouzarjomehri, 2004;Ciraj et al, 2005;Ramanandraibe, 2009;Papadimitriou, 2001;Shahbazi-Gahrouei, 2006). Some investigators focused only patient dose optimization (Brix et al, 2005;Vano & Fernandez, 2007;Seibert, 2004;Williams & Catling, 1998), whereas the others examined both the patient dose and image quality in radiographic devices (Aldrich et al, 2006;Schaefer-Prokop et al, 2008;Geijer, 2002).…”