(Saturday, 4/4/2020) 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM [Mountain Time (GMT-6)]
Purpose: To create a computer software that monitors CT protocol compliance and compares radiation dose across a large CT scanner fleet therefore allowing physicists to easily determine where education outreach efforts should be focused.
Methods: Matlab was used to create a program that organizes a large (200+) patient data-set by automatically calculating patient water equivalent diameter (WED), radiation dose to the patient (mGy), measure patient width (both laterally and anterior-posterior), and use optical character recognition (OCR) to automatically read a table with information not found in the original dicom file. This data is then plot to show radiation as a function of patient width and average patient WED. A plot displaying SD (CT image noise tolerance) as a function of patient width is also created.
Results: The plots of SD as a function of patient width show the locations where CT protocol is being followed to inform medical physicists where to concentrate their education outreach. The plot displaying mGy as a function of patient average WED show where the current CT protocol could be optimized.
Conclusion: A program was created to automatically extract data from jpeg images, calculate WED, patient width, and radiation dose. This data is then plot to allow physicists to easily determine where education outreach should be focused and where the CT protocol can be optimized.
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: Funding for this project was provided by the AAPM Summer Undergraduate Fellowship Program.
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