Coronavirus disease(COVID-19) is an infectiousdiseasecaused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus [1]. Because of its high contagious risk, the early diagnosis is an important factor for patient treatment, especially in the early stage of the disease. X-ray imaging, including chest radiography and/or chest computed tomography (CT), is one of the main diagnostic tools in cases of patients suspected with COVID-19. Concerning the fact that the use of the CT is rapidly growing over the last decade, it is very important to decrease the exposure of the COVID-19...

The current survey is performed on a 320-slice CT system (Figure 1). Only native CT chest examinations with automatic tube current modulation set-up are involved in the study. The following parameters are recorded: volume computed tomography dose index (CTDIvol), dose length product (DLP), image noise in terms of standard deviation (SD), tube voltage (U) and total tube current-time product (mAs), field of view (FOV), gender, age and weight of the patients. The median values for CTDIvol and DLP (and their standard deviation in parentheses) are...

The patient data is collected in the period April 2020 - June 2021. The total number of the COVID-19 patients is 453 (43% women and 57% men; median age – 60 (15) years). 23 (5 %) of all patients died because of the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Most of the patients are tested positive with PCR or rapid antigen test prior to the CT examination. During the CT chest examination of the COVID-19 patients, different CT protocols are used. The median values for CTDIvol and DLP per...

The number of the CT chest examinations performed during the COVID-19 pandemic is constantly growing. Because of their high number and often not a single for a given patient, the radiation exposure of the patients and medical staff is a big concern. A proper algorithm for optimization of the CT COVID-19 protocols may be achieved only after a detailed evaluation of the CT scanning parameters used [4]. As a result of the current study, the following combination of exposure parameters (according to patient size and...

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019; [2] Jeroen Desmet et al.,”Performance of low-dose Chest CT as a triage tool for suspected COVID-19 patients”, J Belg Soc Radiol2021 Feb 16; 105(1):9; [3] Anna Romanyukha et al., "Body size specific effective dose conversion coefficients for CT scans", Radiation Protection Dosimetry 2016 Dec, 172(4): 428-437; [4] Azadbakht, J. et al.,”A review on chest CT scanning parameters implemented in COVID-19 patients: bringing low-dose CT protocols into play”,Egypt J Radiol Nucl Med52,13 (2021).

D. P. Ivanova: Nothing to disclose V. V. Groudeva: Nothing to disclose D. Kostova-Lefterova: Nothing to disclose M. Nedevska: Nothing to disclose E. Mihaylova: Nothing to disclose N. G. Slavkova: Nothing to disclose