診断領域Ｘ線の実効エネルギー推定法

Abstract

Because X-ray exposure doses to patients during X-ray diagnoses have been increasing with recent advances in medical technology, it is important that optimum control of the radiation dose be maintained during diagnoses. For an evaluation of an exposure dose, the effective energy of the X-ray must be determined, but this is difficult to accomplish during the diagnosis. Here we propose a new method to estimate the effective energy of an X-ray. The magnitude of energy released from an X-ray generator (2 peaks, 12 peaks, inverter, and constant potential) depends on various parameters, including tube voltage, tube current, tube voltage waveform, and total filtration of the X-ray tube. Therefore the measurement of an X-ray's effective energy was conducted by the half-value layer measurement method, which changes the values of these parameters. The data obtained by this method were analyzed to clarify the relationships between X-ray effective energy and the respective parameters. It was thus demonstrated that these relationships could be expressed by a simple linear approximation formula. For the calculation of X-ray effective energy by use of this approximation formula, errors were found to be within a range of -2.11% to 10.4%. Therefore, this method is considered usable for an accurate estimation of an X-ray's effective energy without the need for its direct determination during diagnosis.