THE ESTABILISTMENT OF REFERENCE DOSTES IN PAEDIATRIC RADIOLOGY AS A FUNCTION OF PATIENT SIZE

摘要

There is a wide range in paediatric patient size from a newborn baby tio a 15-year-old adolescent. Reference doses for paediatric radiology can sensibly be established only for specific sizes of children. Five standard sizes of patient have been chosne at ages 0 (newborn), 1,5,10 and 15 years. Standard AP and lateral thicknesses for the head and trunk for the refernece ages wre dervied from publsihed measuremetns on children. Normalisation factors for entrance surfawce dose and dose-area product measurements were calculated which depend on the thickness of the real patient, the thickness of the nearest standard `patient', and an effective linear attenuation coefficient (μ). These normalisation factors were applied to European data to dervie some preliminary reference doses.