Organ dose calculation in CT based on scout image data and automatic image registration.

Background: Computed tomography (CT) has become the main contributor of the cumulative radiation exposure in radiology. Information on cumulative exposure history of the patient should be available for efficient management of radiation exposures and for radiological justification.

Purpose: To develop and evaluate automatic image registration for organ dose calculation in CT.

Material And Methods: Planning radiograph (scout) image data describing CT scan ranges from 15 thoracic CT examinations (9 men and 6 women) and 10 abdominal CT examinations (6 men and 4 women) were co-registered with the reference trunk CT scout image. 2-D affine transformation and normalized correlation metric was used for image registration. Longitudinal (z-axis) scan range coordinates on the reference scout image were converted into slice locations on the CT-Expo anthropomorphic male and female models, following organ and effective dose calculations.

Results: The average deviation of z-location of studied patient images from the corresponding location in the reference scout image was 6.2 mm. The ranges of organ and effective doses with constant exposure parameters were from 0 to 28.0 mGy and from 7.3 to 14.5 mSv, respectively. The mean deviation of the doses for fully irradiated organs (inside the scan range), partially irradiated organs and non-irradiated organs (outside the scan range) was 1%, 5%, and 22%, respectively, due to image registration.

Conclusion: The automated image processing method to registrate individual chest and abdominal CT scout radiograph with the reference scout radiograph is feasible. It can be used to determine the individual scan range coordinates in z-direction to calculate the organ dose values. The presented method could be utilized in automatic organ dose calculation in CT for radiation exposure tracking of the patients.