Digital chest radiography system with amorphous selenium flat-panel detectors: Qualitative and dosimetric comparison with a dedicated film-screen system.

Purpose: To compare the quality and radiation dose of a conventional film-screen system and a digital system with amorphous selenium detectors in the study of the chest, by verifying overall performance and exposure levels for the main chest structures in patients of different sizes.

Materials And Methods: An analogic system (Chest-Changer, Dupont, Day-light model 1000) and a digital system (Directray Rad 1000C, Hologic) were tested on a total of 1000 patients randomly assigned to one of two groups of 500 subjects. The patients were further subdivided according to BMI (Body Mass Index). Image quality was determined by two chest radiologists who evaluated eight anatomical structures. The entrance surface dose (skin-dose), calculated based on the exposure parameters, was taken as the patient dose.

Results: Mean dose delivered was very similar for both techniques in the PA view (0.28 mGy), but it was greater in the LL projections obtained with the digital system (1.20 mGy versus 0.83 mGy). The highest overall scores were assigned to 43% and 23.2% analogic radiograms and 64% and 70.2% digital radiograms, for the PA and LL projections respectively. The scores assigned to the various anatomical structures confirmed the better performance of the digital system in almost all of the regions considered.

Conclusions: The mean quality of radiograms is definitely higher with the digital system, in particular in the LL projections, where the higher patient doses are counterbalanced by fewer repeated scans. The greater level of exposure in the digital system appears nonetheless tolerable on account of the greater informativeness and therefore diagnostic gain and also considering the possibilities for improving the system.