Patient doses in computed tomography: An assessment of local diagnostic reference levels in a large teaching hospital

Abstract

This paper presents an estimation of local diagnostic reference levels in computed tomography in a large teaching hospital. Local diagnostic reference levels, expressed in terms of volume weighted computed tomography dose index and dose-length product, were estimated for three most frequent adult computer tomography examinations: head, abdomen and pelvis combined, and thorax. The established local diagnostic reference levels values were similar or slightly higher compared to the available guidelines, indicating the possibility for optimization of current practice. Analyzing the protocols used here and recently published studies on dose reduction in computed tomography, a dose-reduction technique, was proposed to decrease tube current values in all three examinations. However, the optimization should be restricted only to standard-sized patients

An assessment of dose indicators for computed tomography localization procedures in radiation therapy at the University Hospital Rijeka

“…The na tional DRL for ra dio ther apy plan ning CT scans do not ex ist at this mo ment in Croatia or re gion. Even though the sit u a tion is not much better for the diag nos tic DRLs also, some as sess ments have been performed over the past few years [10]. The re sults were com pared to the sel dom pub lished data in or der to com pare the clin i cal prac tices [3][4][5][6].…”

Brain arteriovenous malformations

“…Another significant limitation of CTA, and all multiphase CT examinations in general, is high irradiation dose 29,30 .…”

“…The method provides characterization of not only important anatomic features such as size, localization and vascular feeding and draining components but also the analysis of blood flow 30 . Also it is possible to obtain velocitydependant mapping of brain blood flow with the possibility of marking blood vessels with different colors in correlation with the blood flow velocity 31 .…”

The impact of field size and radiation quality on KAP-meter and CT-chamber response

“…The num ber of med i cal ex am i na tions is ris ing ev ery year and al though the effec tive dose per ex am i na tion is fall ing, the col lec tive ef fec tive dose is ris ing. In the last de cades, there was a sig nif i cant in crease of the num ber of CT ex am i na tions and CT has be come the most im por tant ar ti fi cial source, ac count ing for al most half the ef fec tive dose re sult ing from ar ti fi cial sources [1,2].…”