Hello, I want to calculate how much effective dose my child (6 months old, male) received as a result of a computed radiography scan he had in 2016. On the image, it is written “Stitching Spine AP”, however the image looks like a Pelvis scan actually. There is not much information in the DICOM outputs after the scan unfortunately, so I do not have kVp, mAs, grid, SID, filtration, beam collimation, DAP, ESD etc. information. But I saw in an article on the internet that the “exposure index (EI)” value is a parameter that can give an idea about the patient dose. I am copying the article link below: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S107881742030050X The brand of the CR device on which the scan was performed is Konica Minolta (manufacturer model name: 0817 and station name: CS-2). In the DICOM outputs, the value of tag 0018,1405 (relative x-ray exposure) is given as 130. The value for tag 0018,6000 (sensitivity) is given as 250. As I understand from below links, these are the manufacturer-specific units of radiation dose measured on the detector (or imaging plate): https://dicomlookup.com/dicomtags/(0018,1405) https://www.dicomlookup.com/dicomtags/(0018,6000) I thought these were the tags I should focus on, and I tried to find radiation values corresponding to these units on the internet. I found an article which shows that the value of 130 in tag 0018,1405 for Konica Minolta corresponds to a rough estimate of 20μGy (0.02 mGy) of detector exposure. Article link is below, shown on table 2: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3076558/ As I understand it, this value is the value absorbed by the detector, not by patient. However, assuming that the patient dose would be similar, I tried to calculate the equivalent dose, and by setting the radiation weighting factor (Wr) to 1 (since it is X-ray), I calculated the equivalent dose as 0.02 mSv. For effective dose, organ/tissue factor comes into play, as far as I have read, each tissue has different weight factors, and the sum of these factors for the whole body is “1”. I saw on a website (link below) that the tissue weight factor for bone-marrow (red), colon, lung, stomach, breast, remaining tissues is a value like “0.72”. https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/security-scanners/en/figtableboxes/tissue-weighting-factors.htm Therefore, I calculated the total effective dose of my child as 0.02×0.72=0.014 mSv. My specific questions are as follows, I would be very happy if you could answer them: 1- Is there a place where I can officially find the exposure index values of Konica Minolta CR device? I heard that there is information on this subject in AAPM TG116, but I couldn’t find it. Here is the link: https://www.aapm.org/pubs/reports/RPT_116.pdf 2- I don’t think it would be right to calculate my child’s effective dose from the absorbed dose on the detector, but considering the thickness of a 6-month-old child, I guess there won’t be a big difference between my child’s absorbed dose and the dose absorbed by the detector, what do you think? 3- I think that the patient’s age should also be taken into account when calculating the effective dose, but I don’t know how to add it to the calculation, and I can’t find any information on the internet about such a parameter being used for CR scans, what do you think? 4- Can the doses corresponding to the exposure index vary according to the calibration of the device? Does “calibration topic” make a big difference? 5- While the average effective dose for “pelvis” is given as 0.7 mSv on a table shown at hps.org website (https://hps.org/hpspublications/articles/dosesfrommedicalradiation.html), I believe that the value I calculated (0.014 mSv) for my 6-month-old child is not possible to be correct, what do you think? If my above calculation is wrong, may I kindly ask you to make corrections on my calculations step by step to make me understand better? Thank you very much for your time in advance. P.S. I don’t have a medical physics or medical education, I’m just an engineer trying to understand what I read and is very worried about my child, so I’m sorry if there are any fundamental mistakes in what I wrote.. Those I have contacted about this topic have always given me general answers based on literature data, but I would like to know the exact effective dose based on the actual numbers from my child’s scan, please help me. Wishing you all a healthy new year. Best regards.

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