Measurement of Bone Marrow and Gonadal Dose from the Chest X-ray Examination as a Function of Field Size, Field Alignment, Tube Kilovoltage and Added Filtration

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Abstract
Detailed measurements of bone marrow and gonadal dose were made in a realistic human phantom undergoing the conventional postero-anterior and lateral chest X-ray procedures over a wide range of parameters such as different field sizes, small misalignments of the useful beam, and tube kilo-voltages of 60, 80, 100 and 120 kVp with various combinations of added filtration. Measurement involved the use of small ionization chambers sensibly independent of energy, direction and intensity of incident X radiation. The results are expressed in dose units per milliampere-second of X-ray machine exposure. A study of radiologically acceptable film latitude was made to allow intercomparison of doses for the various beam qualities. The results show the importance of beam collimation and alignment in minimizing the dosage delivered to the active marrow and reproductive regions. By interpolation estimates of bone marrow and gonadal exposure may be made for any chest X-ray procedure using parameters within the range studied here.