Optimization of exposure factor for chest radiograph

Abstract

The chest radiograph has been remain as one of the most commonly performed examination, with considerable repetition among many clinics in Sudan (Khartoum). Such undesirable repetition, could be due to lack of using optimum exposure factors with less account on awareness of technique or anatomy, however the exposure factors are the crucial one. The selection of these factors (kv & mAs) mostly depends on the experience of the technologist and sometimes on theoretical basis which might not gives a satisfactory result. The researcher studied and evaluates the factor that affects the exposure factor selection, to develop an empirical system that gives the optimum exposure factors and tested the accuracy and the reliability of the developed system. The study consisted of 64 patients examined by PA chest X-ray that selected randomly. The collected data includes: chest thickness, body mass index(BMI), age and height. The collected data then correlated with the kv and mAs that used to produced chest x-ray in an attempt to find the variable with the highest correlation coefficient. The result showed that the body mass index and the patient weight were well correlated with the Kv and MAs respectively. The result also showed that there is no significant IX different at p = 0.05 between the exposure factors (Kv and mAs) that used to acquired the chest X-ray and the estimated one from the linear association between the (BMI, weight) and (kv, mAs) using paired t-test with p = 0.99 and 0.669 and t = 0.013 and 0.43 respectively.