Special Articles

3.　 Dose reduction and compliance in pediatric CT

Tetsuya Horiuchi
CT Engineering, GE Healthcare Japan

Abstract

　　To respect the ALARA（As Low As Reasonably Achievable）principle, it is crucial to find a compromise between dose and image quality. This may mean obtaining an image which is not of the best quality possible but are which has sufficient quality for diagnosis. Recently, many solutions have been developed to optimize the dose and image quality for patients.
　　There are different parameters of dose such as CTDI（Computed Tomography Dose Index）and DLP（Dose-Length Product）. Each of these parameters gives information on different aspects of the dose and each of them has a specific function. As a result, it is necessary to understand which factors are influencing which dose parameters. While it is important to understand how these factors are influencing the dose, we must remember to consider dose and image quality together, because they are always linked.

Keywords：Computed tomography（CT）, Infants, Children, Radiation exposure