Program Information

Evaluation of Body and Head Dimensions of Pediatric Patients as a Function of Age

JA Seibert*, JM Boone , UC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, CA

Presentations

MO-E-17A-10 Monday 1:45PM - 3:45PM Room: 17A

Purpose: Phantom development in medical physics plays an important role in radiation dose assessment and image quality evaluation, and this is especially true in the pediatric patient population. The purpose of this investigation was to establish the relationship between patient age and patient size, focusing on the abdomen-pelvis and head effective diameters, for patients ranging in age from newborn to 18 years.

Methods: A dose reporting tool for computed tomography systems was installed at our institution to achieve compliance with state law commencing on July 1, 2012. The software records a number of patient-specific data, and also reports CT dose metrics (CTDIvol and DLP) into the patients interpretive report. The database generated by the software was mined to determine patient effective diameter as a function of age for pediatric patients aged 0-18 years. CT protocols including abdomen-pelvis and routine head were evaluated, and specific to this study the patients age, gender and equivalent diameter were recorded.

Results: Six age ranges were evaluated: A(0-3), B(4-6), C(7-9), D(10-12),E(13-15),F(16-18). For the torso in these groups based upon 694 patients, median effective diameters were 147, 167, 184, 214, 231, 246 mm, respectively. For the head (N=1833), median diameters were 143, 157, 162, 168, 174, and 174, respectively.

Conclusion: A solid understanding of the approximate dimensions of pediatric patients as a function of age is useful in the development of age-based imaging protocols and dose assessments. CT dose-reporting tools generate a great deal of data with respect to body dimensions automatically. In this study, median equivalent diameters for the abdomen-pelvis and head of pediatric patients were evaluated. These data may prove useful in the development of both mathematical and physical phantoms for dosimetry and image quality assessment.

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