engleski

Towards establishment of national reference dose levels from computed tomography in Croatia-first results.

Computed tomography (CT) is a sectional imaging technique that uses a collimated X-ray beam perpendicular to the body axis to acquire image of a body slice of desired width. Since its introduction, it has been known that CT is related to high radiation dose to the patient. The aim of the present work is to contribute to the establishment of diagnostic reference levels (DRLs) for various CT examinations in our country. Our survey was performed on the helical CT scanner Shimadzu X-ray CT system SCT- 7800 T (Shimadzu, Japan). All measurements were performed during 2009 and 2010. 105 adult patients took part in our survey, 44 women (42%) and 61 men (58%). Mean patient age was 58, ranging from 21 to 94. Each patient signed the informed consent form. Typical CT examinations, namely routine head, chest and abdomen, were selected for the study. For each examination, the parameters, such as kVp, mAs, number of slices, slice thickness, pitch and length of examined body segment were recorded. We believe that our measurements provide a good basis for further investigation of radiation doses from CT scanners in Croatia. We hope to expand our survey in near future to include more radiology departments in Zagreb and other regional medical centers in Croatia.

CT ; national refrence dose levels ;

nije evidentirano