Estimating radiation effective doses from whole body computed tomography scans based on U.S. soldier patient height and weight

• Published in: BMC medical imaging 2011-10, Vol.11 (1), p.20-20, Article 20
• Main Authors: Prins, Robert D, Thornton, Raymond H, Schmidtlein, C Ross, Quinn, Brian, Ching, Hung, Dauer, Lawrence T
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Body Height; Body Weight; CT imaging; Female; Health aspects; Humans; Male; Military aspects; Military Personnel; Monte Carlo Method; Phantoms, Imaging; Physiological aspects; Predictive Value of Tests; Radiation Dosage; Radiography, Abdominal; Radiography, Thoracic; Regression Analysis; Soldiers; Stature; Tomography, X-Ray Computed; United States
• ISSN: 1471-2342; 1471-2342
• DOI: 10.1186/1471-2342-11-20

The purpose of this study is to explore how a patient's height and weight can be used to predict the effective dose to a reference phantom with similar height and weight from a chest abdomen pelvis computed tomography scan when machine-based parameters are unknown. Since machine-based scanning parameters can be misplaced or lost, a predictive model will enable the medical professional to quantify a patient's cumulative radiation dose. One hundred mathematical phantoms of varying heights and weights were defined within an x-ray Monte Carlo based software code in order to calculate organ absorbed doses and effective doses from a chest abdomen pelvis scan. Regression analysis was used to develop an effective dose predictive model. The regression model was experimentally verified using anthropomorphic phantoms and validated against a real patient population. Estimates of the effective doses as calculated by the predictive model were within 10% of the estimates of the effective doses using experimentally measured absorbed doses within the anthropomorphic phantoms. Comparisons of the patient population effective doses show that the predictive model is within 33% of current methods of estimating effective dose using machine-based parameters. A patient's height and weight can be used to estimate the effective dose from a chest abdomen pelvis computed tomography scan. The presented predictive model can be used interchangeably with current effective dose estimating techniques that rely on computed tomography machine-based techniques.