Dose-Area Product and Body Doses

Dose-area product, a quantity easily measured in the X ray room, has been proposed for use as a dose index for patient exposure in diagnostic radiology. The most important aspect of the dose-area product is that it facilitates in practice the exposure dose assessment of individual patients. Furthermore, empirical functions relating dose-area product to organ doses or to effective dose, quantities supposingly expressing the radiation detriment, were estimated by some authors. In this work, a thorough study is attempted to investigate the relation of dose-area product likely to be measured, with the corresponding organ doses for a series of common radiographic examinations. For each examination, the influence of beam quality, field size and shifts of the position of the field on the above relation are also studied. This is achieved by means of organ doses obtained using MIRD-type human phantoms of a male and female adult and a voxel phantom of a baby. A discussion on the suitability of dose-area product as a quantity to assess dose delivered to the critical tissues of the patient will be included, highlighting the conditions and uncertainties. The correlation of dose-area product and effective dose will be critically discussed.