The Effects of a Carbon Fiber Table Top on Radiation Dose and Image Quality During Fluoroscopy

Abstract: Fluoroscopic procedures are commonly used in today’s healthcare and involve ionizing radiation exposure to personnel and patients. During these procedures the patient is placed on a surgical table. The board on which the patient is lying on is referred to as the table top, and how different table top materials affect the image quality and radiation exposure has been investigated in this report. Radiation exposure measurements at different sites have been recorded with both a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and an anthropomorphic phantom representing a patient. Image quality assessment was made in terms of contrast, signal-to-noise ratio and modular transfer function. The result showed that a higher table top attenuation or a higher tube voltage may lead to a lower dose but also a reduction in image quality. The preferred tube voltage and current, and resulting image quality is task dependent, i.e. dependent on the type of clinical procedure, which makes it hard to generalize in the selection of a certain table. Two methods have been proposed when selecting a table, one which can be considered as quantification of the trade-off between image quality and radiation dose, the other one is a fast method for comparing a large amount of tables.