Routine Dose Recording in Diagnostic Radiology

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Abstract
Methods of measuring and ways of expressing patient dose in routine diagnostic radiography are briefly reviewed. Measurement of dose in units such as ergs or joules should be confined to instances when dose is measured in a specific structure this will be a laboratory procedure since to obtain the data necessary may require several exposures. Routine dose measurement normally has to rely on a single measurement using an incident exposure meter which will include radiation not actually absorbed in the patient and which will record the same dose whether there is a patient in the beam or not. Dose measured in this manner should be recorded in r x cm2 in order that the results may not be considered to be more accurate than they really are. Results are given of a test of a commercially available r x cm2 instrument: and data are given which can be used to convert exposure into g-r assuming that all the radiation is absorbed in soft tissue, for kVp''s between 50 and 150. In practice the ability to automatically integrate the area is usually more important than to correct for HVT. Dose meters of the r x cm2 type are useful in fluoroscopy when the area is continually variable and for procedures in which the dose may be relatively high or when it is desired to keep a check on personnel in training.

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