Comparative study of patient doses and establishment of local diagnostic reference levels in Computed Tomography in line with the new ICRP recommendations

Congress:

EuroSafe Imaging 2020

Poster Number:

ESI-07643

Type:

EuroSafe Imaging

Keywords:

Not applicable, Retrospective, Dosimetric comparison, Radiation safety, Physics, Dosimetry, CT, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Radiation physics, Physics in Medical Imaging

Authors:

S. Avramova-Cholakova, E. Kulama

DOI:

10.26044/esi2020/ESI-07643

DOI-Link:

https://dx.doi.org/10.26044/esi2020/ESI-07643

Fig. 1: Median values of CTDIvol and DLP per CT scanner and type of examination.

Fig. 2: LDRLs and NDRLs for CTDIvol and DLP.

Fig. 3: Box plots of CTDIvol and DLP for all scanners for Paranasal Sinuses...

Fig. 4: Box plots of CTDIvol and DLP for all scanners for Cervical Spine examination....

Background/introduction

Computed tomography (CT) has been proven to deliver high doses with a significant contribution to the collective effective dose of the population from medical exposure. A report of the European Commission reveals that mean effective doses from CT examinations in European countries vary from 0.3 mSv for Head in Moldova up to 50.5 mSv for Trunk in Denmark [1]. The contribution of CT to the total collective effective dose from X-ray and nuclear medicine examinations for the group of countries from the European Union, Switzerland,...

Description of activity and work performed

Materials and Methods The CT scanners included in the study are described in Table 1. Data on scanner manufacturer, model, year of manufacture, number of detector rows, use of iterative reconstruction and availability of automatic tube voltage selection are provided. Four Siemens SOMATOM Definition AS+ scanners with automatic tube voltage selection and tube current modulation (TCM), three of them with iterative reconstruction (IR), two Philips Ingenuity and one Philips Brilliance iCT 256 (all with TCM and IR) were included. Patient data were retrieved from the...

Conclusion and recommendations

Significant differences in protocol settings were observed. This lead to large difference of patient doses for some of the examinations, most probably due to the different TCM settings, although differences in slice thickness and pitch were also found. Additional optimisation of the CT examinations is needed with the initial step of standardisation of the protocols used. A work is ongoing to standardise all the protocols between all scanners.

Personal/organisational information

S. Avramova-Cholakova; London/UK - nothing to disclose E. Kulama; London/UK - nothing to disclose

References

1. European Commission. Radiation Protection No 180. Medical radiation exposure of the European population. EU, 2014. 2. European Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom on basic safety standards for protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionising radiation and repealing Directives 89/618/Euratom, 90/641/Euratom, 96/29/Euratom, 97/43/Euratom and 2003/122/Euratom. OJ of the EU. L13; 57: 1–73 (2014). 3. Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, 2004. Guidance on the establishment and use of diagnostic reference levels for medical X-ray examinations. IPEM report 88. 4. International Commission on Radiological Protection,...