FEASIBILITY OF DISPLAYED EXPOSURE INDEX IN IEC STANDARD FRAMEWORK AS A DOSE OPTIMISATION TOOL FOR DIGITAL RADIOGRAPHY SYSTEMS

Abstract

International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) established the framework for the use of exposure index (EI) for evaluating the exposure conditions with various digital systems. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of EI, as per the IEC, by comparing the EIs obtained through manual calculated and that displayed on the console of two computed radiography (CR) and digital radiography (DR) systems with radiation beam qualities of RQA3,5,7 and 9. As a result, both two systems indicated an uncertainty of less than 20% for both calculated and displayed EI with all beam qualities except displayed EI obtained by RQA3. However, the displayed EI values were different even under the same exposure conditions because of the characteristics of the imaging receptor materials, such as BaFI or CsI, of two systems. Therefore, when an operator attempts to introduce displayed EI for managing radiation dose, it is essential to understand the characteristics of the digital system.