Assessment of Image Quality and Radiation Dose to Adult Patients undergoing Computed Radiography Examinations

Authors

  • Daniel Ackom  Department of Physics, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
  • Stephen Inkoom  Department of Medical Physics, School of Nuclear and Allied Sciences, University of Ghana, Atomic Campus, Accra, Ghana
  • Edem Sosu  Medical Radiation Physics Centre, Radiological and Medical Sciences Research Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, Accra. Ghana
  • Cyril Schandorf  Radiation Protection Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, Accra. Ghana

Keywords:

Contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), Optimisation

Abstract

Image quality and its related entrance surface dose to adult patients undergoing computed radiography (CR) examinations have been assessed using ImageJ software version 1.48 in two hospitals H-1 and H-2. In all 70 radiographs of adult patients were examined in the study consisting of 10 each for chest PA, cervical spine AP and LAT, lumbar spine AP and LAT and skull AP and LAT. Image quality of the radiographic images was assessed in terms of contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The CNR for all examinations were between 3.54 3.27 and 20.63 8.65 for the two hospitals involved in this study. A maximum difference 17.09 in CNR was found between hospital 1 (H-1) and 2 (H-2). The results obtained for SNR for both hospitals showed that 92.86% of all the images assessed were at least 1.22 higher than the Rose Model of the threshold value of 5. The images were of good quality and hence, they provided useful clinical information. The relationship between CNR and the entrance surface dose (ESD) to patients for all the examinations showed that there is a potential to reduce doses to patients while keeping images of diagnostic quality.

References

  1. International Atomic Energy Agency (2007). Dosimetry in Diagnostic Radiology: An International Code of Practice (Technical), Vienna.
  2. Kud, M. (2012). Image Quality Assessment. In WDS’12 Proceedings of Contributed Papers, Part I (pp. 94?99).
  3. Wang, Z., Bovik, A. C., and Lu, L. (2002). Why is image quality assessment so difficult? In Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Yorktown Heights, New York.
  4. Mohammadi, P., Ebrahimi-moghadam, A., and Shirani, S. (2014). Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment of Image?: A Survey. Elsevier, (June), 1?50.
  5. Bourne, R. (2010). Fundamentals of Digital Imaging in Medicine. New York: Springer. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-087-6
  6. Pascoal, A., Lawinski, C. P. Honey, I. & Blake, P. (2006). Evaluation of a software package for automated quality assessment of contrast detail images ? comparison with subjective visual assessment. Physics in Medicine and Biology, 50, 5743-5757.
  7. Ferreira, T., and Rasband, W. (2012). ImageJ User Guide User Guide ImageJ (Revised ed). USA. Retrieved from http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/docs/guide/ user-guide.pdf
  8. Ahmed, A., Garcia, A., Bakker, A., Tomkinson, D., Salamin, J., and Lange, R. De. (2014). A comparison of Sinogram Affirmed Iterative Reconstruction and filtered back projection on image quality and dose reduction in paediatric head CT?: a phantom study. OPTIMAX 2014 - Radiation Dose and Image Quality Optimisation in Medical Imaging, 27?36.
  9. Hess, R., Neitzel, U. (2012). Optimizing image quality and dose in digital radiography of paediatric extremities. RoFo-Ortschritte Auf Dem Gebiet Der R, 184: 643?649.
  10. Reis, C. S., Ndlovu, J., Serrenho, C., Akhtar, I., Haan De, S., Garcia, J., et al (2014). Optimisation of paediatrics computed radiography for full spine curvature measurements using a phantom: a pilot study. Optimax 2014: Radiation Dose and Image Quality Optimisation in Medical Imaging. Retrieved from http://usir.salford.ac.uk/34439/
  11. Doyle, P. (2008). Assessment and optimisation of digital radiography systems for clinical use. Assessment and Optimisation of Digital Radiography Systems for Clinical Use. University of Glasgow. Retrieved from http://theses.gla.ac.uk/873
  12. Bath, M. (2010). Evaluating Imaging Systems: Practical Applications. Radiation Protection Dosimetry. 2010; 139: 26?36.
  13. International Atomic Energy Agency. Diagnostic Radiology Physics: A Handbook for Teachers and Students, 2014.
  14. Zainon, R., Abu Talib, N. S., Abu Bakar, S. N. A., Mohd Moner, N. H. &Abdul Aziz, N. A. (2015). Investigation of Radiation Dose and Image Quality in X-Radiographic Imaging. Transactions on Engineering Technologies: World Congress on engineering, 362-368.

International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology

Downloads

Published

2017-12-31

Issue

Volume 3, Issue 8, November-December-2017

Section

Research Articles

License

Copyright (c) IJSRST

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

[1]
Daniel Ackom, Stephen Inkoom, Edem Sosu, Cyril Schandorf "Assessment of Image Quality and Radiation Dose to Adult Patients undergoing Computed Radiography Examinations" International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology(IJSRST), Online ISSN : 2395-602X, Print ISSN : 2395-6011,Volume 3, Issue 8, pp.89-94, November-December-2017.