Abstract:
This study was carried out to determine the patient absorbed dose and effective dose
in the routine Multi-Detector X-ray Computed Tomography (MDCT) examinations at
Ramathibodi Hospital, by comparison of two methods; Dose Free-in-air using an ionization
chamber, and Thermoluminescent (TLD) dosimetry in human mimicking phantom.
Correlation between the two methods was determined by regression analysis. P-values of less
than 0.05 were deemed statistically significant. Applications and limitations of Free-in-air
method were also investigated.
Results showed that absorbed doses in the phantom were mostly lower than Free-inair
doses for every protocol. In the head protocol, both methods showed similar results of
effective doses less than 1 mSv. For other protocols, effective doses ranged between 0.47-
4.69 mSv, which corresponded to values previously observed by other investigators. Results
also showed that doses measured by the Free-in-air method were 0.6-1.2, 0.4-0.7, 0.6-0.8,
0.7-0.9 and 1.6-1.8 times higher than the TLD method in the head, neck, chest, upper
abdomen and pelvis protocols, respectively. In all protocols, regression analysis showed
significant correlation between the two methods with r-values greater than 0.9 (p<0.05).
Measurements of patient dose in Rando phantom were laborious and timeconsuming.
The simplicity of the Free-in-air method is an advantage of this quantity, but is
far from being representative of organ dose because no phantom was used to simulated the
human body, and without conversion factor. It is unable to assess the organ dose or effective
dose. Therefore, the Free-in-air method will be largely used for performance tests on installed
scanners, for example, acceptance and constancy tests