Open AccessCorrelation between age and head diameters in the paediatric patients during CT examination of the head
Author(s) -
Arif Fahmi,
Khoirul Anam,
Suryono Suryono,
Mohd Hanafi Ali,
Arif Jauhari
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
polish journal of medical physics and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 1898-0309
pISSN - 1425-4689
DOI - 10.2478/pjmpe-2019-0030
Subject(s) - medicine , nuclear medicine , computed tomography , head (geology) , radiology , geology , geomorphology
An estimate of patient dose, patient size should be used to normalise the output dose of CT machine in the terms of volume CT dose index, CTDI vol . There are two metrics to characterise the patient size, i.e. the effective diameter (D eff ) and the water-equivalent diameter (D w ). These two metrics could be estimated by patient age. However, to date, relationships between the age and head patient size (D eff and D w ) have not been established for the pediatric patients. The aim of this study was to establish the relationships between the age and head patient size (D eff and the D w ) as the basis for calculating the size-specific dose estimate (SSDE) for paediatric head CT examination. The data were retrospectively collected from serial images of the CT head in the DICOM file from one hundred and thirteen paediatric patients aged 0-17 years (63 male and 50 female patients) underwent head CT examinations. The patient’s sizes (D eff and D w ) were calculated from the patient’s images using the IndoseCT version 15a software. The D eff and D w values were correlated with age of patients using regression analysis. It was found that patient size (D eff and D w ) correlated well with the age of the patient with R 2 more than 0.8. The size of the D w is bigger than the D eff . The D eff values for male patients are 12.38 to 16.21 cm, and D w values are 11.96 to 18.16 cm, respectively. For female patients, the values of D eff are from 11.54 to 16.87 cm, and the values of D w are from 11.60 to 17.86 cm, respectively.