[ RadSafe ] CT incident - how could it happen? Too many slices, high skin dose

[garyi at trinityphysics.com]

Maybe so, but a 9 yr old cervical spine is pretty close to 15 cm.  So if you wanted to look at 
the c-spine in 1 mm detail on a multi slice scanner, you could take 1 scan with 8 rotations of 
20 x 1 mm each to cover the anatomy in question.  There's nothing outrageous in that.  


-Gary Isenhower

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On 13 Nov 2008 at 1:46, parthasarathy k s wrote:

Don't you think that 151 slices are too many! Skin dose in CT under certain conditions could 
be a few tens of mGy.

K.S.Parthasarathy 


From: "garyi at trinityphysics.com" <garyi at trinityphysics.com>
To: radsafe at radlab.nl; Mauro Campoleoni <trentino at iol.it>
Sent: Wednesday, 12 November, 2008 7:39:46
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] CT incident - how could it happen?

It seems extremely unlikely. The article, including Brenner's remarks, are pretty "nuanced"
and don't actually say anything definite about the exam or the radiation dose delivered. It is
possible that the "151 scans" are actually 151 *slices* of 1 mm each, acquired in one or two
passes with a multislice scanner. The article may simply be designed to put public pressure
on the hospital to $ettle quickly.

If dose implied by the "red marks all the way around his head, like a severe sunburn"
statement were true, the child would be dead or very sick. At least, if the erythema is
radiation induced there should be some epilation also, but there is no mention of that in the
article.

I wonder if it is possible to do EPR dosimetry on human hair?

-Gary Isenhower