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Lumbar spine radiography--poor collimation practices after implementation of digital technology
1Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. lgz@ucn.dk
The British Journal of Radiology
|May 25, 2011
Summary
Digital radiography has led to larger irradiated areas outside the area of diagnostic interest (ADI) compared to analogue methods. This practice increases patient radiation doses unnecessarily.
Area of Science:
- Radiological Imaging
- Medical Physics
Background:
- The transition to digital radiography (DR) may have decreased attention to proper collimation.
- Digital techniques allow masking of irradiated areas outside the area of diagnostic interest (ADI).
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the hypothesis that collimation practices have worsened since the adoption of digital radiography.
- To compare collimation effectiveness between analogue and digital frontal lumbar spine radiographs.
Main Methods:
- Compared the proportion of irradiated field outside the ADI in 86 digital and 86 analogue lumbar spine radiographs.
- Used Mann-Whitney test for statistical comparison.
- Assessed irradiated field on non-masked raw-data digital images.
Main Results:
- The proportion of irradiated field outside the ADI was significantly larger in digital images (61.7%) than analogue images (42.4%).
- Mean total field size was 46% larger in digital images (791 cm²) compared to analogue images (541 cm²).
Conclusions:
- Digital radiography implementation resulted in significantly larger irradiated areas.
- This leads to unnecessary increases in patient radiation doses.
