Abstract
The CT scanner consists of many hardware and software features that affect patient dose. Many of these are controlled by the user, or are implicit within organ specific scan protocols. To understand many of these features and their implications on radiation dose to the patient, it is valuable to understand the CT dose indices that are commonly used and their limitations. This chapter begins by reviewing currently used, and accepted, dose descriptors for CT scanners, and outlines some of the limitations of these parameters whilst still advocating their valid use in the description of dose characteristics of CT scanners, and specifically in the comparison of CT scan protocols. The second part of the chapter discusses the effect of the scanner and scan protocol parameters on the dose to the patient. Specifically these are separated into some key hardware features, and then parameters which are usually selectable by the user within a scan protocol. A brief description and overview of these features are given, as well as aspects of their implications on image quality.
The address of the authors (Sue Edyvean and Maria Lewis) will be in existence until September 2011 and further correspondence can be done with their mail address.
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Edyvean, S., Lewis, M., Britten, A. (2012). Radiation Dose Metrics and the Effect of CT Scan Protocol Parameters. In: Tack, D., Kalra, M., Gevenois, P. (eds) Radiation Dose from Multidetector CT. Medical Radiology(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/174_2012_542
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/174_2012_542
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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