Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2020
Keywords:
Performed at one institution, Observational, Retrospective, Developmental disease, Congenital, Aneurysms, Diagnostic procedure, CT, Thorax, Head and neck, Cardiac, Action 7 - Radiation protection of children
Authors:
D. P. Ivanova, M. Nedevska, D. Kostova-Lefterova, V. V. Groudeva
DOI:
10.26044/esi2020/ESI-05000
Description of activity and work performed
The data presented in Table 1 is collected between 2015 and 2019. The total number of the paediatric patients is 56 (45 % girls and 55 % boys).
The analyses show variations for the median CTDIvol and DLP values per procedure and standard deviation in parentheses between the age groups during the different types of CT examinations performed (Table 1).
The CTDIvol and DLP values are slightly increasing with increasing the age of the patient for the CT thorax, head and cardiac examinations. This is not valid for the CT abdomen examinations.
Also, the radiation dose received by the children during the CT abdomen is 4 times higher than the CT thorax.
The results are also presented in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3.
As there is a quest for the lowest possible radiation dose, but without a compromise in the image quality, an optimization of the CT head examination in the age group 5-10 years is performed. The protocol that is used during the optimization is with the following technical parameters: tube voltage - 100 kV, tube current - 100 mA (without automatic exposure control), slice thickness - 2 mm, beam width - 32 mm, helical mode with pitch - 0.83, FOV - 240 mm and rotation time - 0.5 s.
With decreasing the tube voltage from 120 kV to 100 kV and the beam width from 128 mm to 32 mm, the CTDIvol and DLP values are also decreased 2 times (Fig. 4).
All the images from all the 56 paediatric patients are evaluated by the two radiologists working in the Department of Radiology as images with fully acceptable quality (Fig. 5).