Recent Federal guidelines for radiation protection specify maximum exposure limits for certain radiological examinations performed in Federal institutions. For example, the maximum entrance skin exposure for a P.A. chest (23 cm) is recommended to be 30 milliroentgen. These guidelines, however, leave the criterion of image quality to the discretion of the institution. An investigation was done using an anthropomorphic chest phantom with simulated pulmoary nodules and pneumonia. A series of chest radiographs were produced at various entrance exposures by altering kilovoltage and image receptor. The exposures ranged from 5 mR to 65 mR. The variation of image quality obtainable within this range was categorized as least acceptable, acceptable, and most acceptable by three observers. The range of acceptability is correlated with entrance skin exposure.

Date Published: 6 July 1979
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 0173, Application of Optical Instrumentation in Medicine VII, (6 July 1979); doi: 10.1117/12.957125

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0173:
Application of Optical Instrumentation in Medicine VII
Joel E. Gray, Editor(s)