Organ Dose and Radiation Exposure Risk: A Study Comparing Radiation Dose Using Two Software Packages

Abstract

With the rapid development of X-ray equipment, assessing the patient’s radiation dose has become an important issue. This study uses DoseCal and PCXMC software to estimate the effective dose (ED) for 510 adult patients undergoing abdomen anteroposterior (AP) and chest anteroposterior/posteroanterior (AP/PA) X-ray examinations in Najran, Saudi Arabia. This study reported our experience with DoseCal and PCXMC software in calculating the ED and organ doses in abdomen and chest X-ray diagnostics. The mean ED values calculated using DoseCal were 0.051, 0.115, and 0.045 mSv for Abdomen AP, chest AP, and PA, respectively. Further, the mean ED calculated using PCXMC is 0.062, 0.132, and 0.047 mSv for Abdomen AP, chest AP, and PA, respectively. The dose results calculated by PCXMC were higher than DoseCal; however, we strongly recommended the dose surveyors utilize PCXMC because it uses the most recent tissue weighting factors (WTs) and offers a risk calculation.