Siemens SOMATOM Sensation 16, Application Manual, Page: 15 / 148

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The concept of effective dose would allow the com-
parison of radiation risk associated with different CT or
x-ray exams, i.e. different exams associated with the
same effective dose would have the same radiation risk
for the patient. It also allows comparing the applied
x-ray exposure to the natural background radiation,
e.g. 2 – 3 mSv per year in Germany.
For most of our scan protocols, we calculated the
effective dose numbers for standard male* and female*
and listed the result in the description of each scan
protocol.
The calculation was done by the commercially available
program “WinDose“ (Wellhoefer Dosimetry) – as shown
in figure 1 – 3.
For pediatric protocols, we used the WinDose calcula-
tion and the correction factors published in “Radiation
Exposure in Computed Topography“**, in which there
only the conversion factors for the age of 8 weeks and
7 years old are available.
General
Fig. 1: User interface of the PC program WinDose.
All parameters necessary for the effective dose calcu-
lation have to be specified.