title: A dose index as a tool to estimate paediatric patient doses in digital projection radiography.
abstract: Radiation exposure during childhood is estimated to have a lifetime risk up to seven times greater than exposures at adult age. Therefore, paediatric patient dose monitoring is a major concern in radiology. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity of a dose index, displayed at the digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) header of the images, as a dosimetric quantity to estimate the entrance surface dose (ESD) for each procedure. It was carried out over a sample of 156 paediatric patients who underwent a chest examination. National Radiation Protection Board Report 318 model was used to categorise patients by age and to estimate their thickness. Corrected dose index values were compared with calculated ESD, estimated from tube output and radiographic technique. The deviation between both values remained within 2% for every age group, except for patients up to 1 y. Therefore, the index could be used to estimate ESD, allowing to manage greater patient dose databases.
authors.affiliation: Medical Physics and Radiation Protection Department, Hospital Universitario La Princesa, Diego de Leon 62, 28006 Madrid, Spain. pgarciac.hlpr@salud.madrid.org
authors.forename: Paula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Garcia Castañon
authors.forename: Maria Luisa
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: España Lopez
authors.forename: Virginia
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Fernandez Bedoya
authors.forename: Rocio
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bermudez Luna
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rodriguez Martin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D010372:Pediatrics; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011834:Radiation Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement; D013902:Radiography, Thoracic; D015203:Reproducibility of Results