Semiautomated fluoroscopy radiation dose capture and reporting

Area of Science:

• Radiology
• Medical Physics
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Accurate radiation dose monitoring is crucial for patient safety in fluoroscopic procedures.
• Manual data collection for fluoroscopic dose is time-consuming and prone to errors.
• Integrating dose data into radiology reports enhances quality control and research capabilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a semiautomated system for capturing and reporting fluoroscopic dose data.
• To implement a novel Web-based interface for dose data entry by technologists.
• To enable automatic population of radiology reports with dose information.

Main Methods:

• Development of a semiautomated system with a Web-based interface.
• Technologists entered fluoroscopic dose data at the time of examination.
• Radiology reports were automatically populated with captured dose data.

Main Results:

• The system successfully captured dose data in 94% of 5,914 reports over 6 months.
• Missing data were primarily due to human error (90.5%) and system malfunction (9.5%).
• Quality control measurements allowed reconstruction of most missing dose data.

Conclusions:

• The semiautomated system is effective for capturing fluoroscopic dose data in a large radiology department.
• The Web-based interface streamlines data entry and report generation.
• Addressing human error and system reliability is key to maximizing data capture rates.