The impact of anthropometric patient‐phantom matching on organ dose: A hybrid phantom study for fluoroscopy guided interventions

Abstract

The results indicate two sources of error when patients are matched with phantoms: Anatomical error, which is inherent due to differences in organ size and location, and error attributed to differences in the total soft tissue attenuation. For small patients, differences in soft tissue attenuation are minimal and are exceeded by inherent anatomical differences. For large patients, difference in soft tissue attenuation can be large. In these cases, patient-phantom matching proves most effective as differences in soft tissue attenuation are mitigated. With increasing obesity rates, overweight patients will continue to make up a growing fraction of all patients undergoing medical imaging. Thus, having phantoms that better represent this population represents a considerable improvement over previous methods. In response to this study, additional phantoms representing heavier weight percentiles will be added to the UFHADM and UFHADF patient-dependent series.