Keywords:
Education and training, Diagnostic procedure, Digital radiography, Musculoskeletal bone
Authors:
K. McNally, K. Matthews; Dublin/IE
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-3387
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of various centring points on the image quality of a radiograph.
The conclusions are:
- Centring points used and taught in clinical practice can vary from those published in authoritative texts.
- Subjective centring points can adversely affect the visualisation of radiographic anatomy,
as the greater distance from the published centring point can lead to distortion of important structures.
- Subjective centring points appear to be in close enough proximity to the published centring points for the adequate operation of the automatic exposure control (AEC).
- Subjective centring can have a negative effect on the collimation accuracy of certain projections,
but not so much as to produce non-diagnostic images.
- Subjective centring points generally produce images of worse quality than those obtained with published centring points.
- Some subjective centring points result in images of less than diagnostic quality.
In any clinical scenario,
the radiographer should aim to apply the most objective centring technique applying published best practice in order to produce the most optimal radiographic images.