Description
Abstract:Aim: The primary objective of this study was to optimise image quality and radiation exposure to patients undergoing chest X-ray examinations and harmonise the chest radiography protocols across different conventional radiographic systems.
Methods and materials: In this study, five Siemens digital radiography systems were used to standardise thoracic protocols, optimise image quality and control radiation dose.
A CDRAD 2.0 phantom was used to assess technical and quantitative image quality. The phantom, in combination with 20 cm PMMA plates simulating the patient's body material, enabled X-ray imaging.
The CDRAD image analyser software version 2.1.9 automatically calculated and evaluated the contrast detail resolution of CDRAD X-ray images taken with the different systems. The Monte Carlo patient simulation software PCXMC version 2.0.1 was used to calculate the effective dose (ED) for patients.
Results: Quantitative image quality and radiation exposure to the patients for both default setting chest examination protocol and optimised chest protocols were obtained. Effective doses to patients of the optimised chest protocol have shown to be a bit higher than the default settings protocols. However, the quantitative image quality obtained in the optimised protocols was higher than the image quality obtained in the existing default chest examination protocols for all systems.
Conclusion: In this work, it was possible to optimize the image quality and harmonise the technical settings. Furthermore, uniformity of the systems on the clinical phantom base was found.