Evaluation of conventional X-ray unit in medical imaging department

Abstract

Conventional radiography or X-ray is part of diagnostic imaging tool for detection and diagnosis of diseases. Since the X-ray was discovered in 1895 to 2010 more than 5 billion medical imaging studies were published worldwide. However, there are certain harmful biological effects were recorded; for that the concept of quality control and radiation protection was developed to minimize these effects. But now in most of developing countries there is lack of awareness and interest of radiation protection and quality control in radiology department even sometimes there is no QC tools, which can lead to improper dose, risk to the machine, error in reading and image quality. The present study had been carried out to evaluate the radiation protection and quality control measures in 15 radiology department in Khartoum state. Data had been collected divided in to two main parts, first part radiation protection tests, which include visual inspection test, room dimension, and scattered radiation. Secondly quality control tests which include output accuracy, linearity, reproducibility, collimator, filtration, beam alignment. The data were processed, analyzed and compared with standard tolerance of radiation protection and quality control test to determine whether these units comply with standards or not, and suggest any modification should be necessary to correct the observed defects. The result of this study showed that, the average of acceptable percentage in all the units was 70% and 74% in radiation protection test and quality control test respectively. This percentage generally acceptable for all units.