Radiography - Science topic

Here are a few innovative project ideas in radiography that could explore both technology and clinical applications:

1. AI-Enhanced Radiography for Early Detection of Lung Diseases

2. Augmented Reality (AR) Assisted Radiography Training Module

3. Portable Digital Radiography Unit for Field Applications

4. Radiation Dose Monitoring and Reduction System for Pediatric Imaging

5. 3D Printed Anatomical Models for Radiographic Calibration

6. Dual-Energy X-ray for Bone Health and Cardiovascular Risk Assessment

Each of these ideas could be further developed depending on your interest in technology, clinical application, or patient safety in radiography.

If you see the term "stiffness" in a MRE study, it is likely referring to shear stiffness. If you are unsure, you can always check the study's methods section to see how the term was defined.

Over-using Radiography as a diagnostic method, there other safer methods for unknown problems, if they don't work. Then radiography or other X-ray based methods can be prescribed. Other radiographic problem could be that workplaces upgrade their old SF or CR systems into newer DR's, but forget to upgrade the computers they link the units with. That means even though DR is far faster than older methods, it is hindered by weak computational power. Personally these seem widespread and interesting enough, hope I helped.

Dr. Robert M Nishikawa has some slides from an AAPM presentation that explain this. You may want to start with this and explore his references to answer the questions you are asking.

Hello Maidul Islam

I think the preference of course is decided by the employer so if you have an idea of the idea and/or job description, that may give an even better clue for you.

Dear Dr. Gerhard Martens

Thanks for your suggestion and I will follow it up.

Best regards,

A.U.F.

In addition to what others have said, I would say use the outcomes measures set out in the curriculum to address this.

With great pleasure!

Tina Mamaladze ,cytopathologist from Tbilisi Georgia

If your machine has this function, I'm sure you should use it. So far, my colleagues are using the exposure index recommended by the manufacturers. May I know your machine brand?

Yes, recent studies show that X-ray and microcomputer tomography can be used as mass radiography tools to diagnose COVID-19. Regards, Sergey Viktorovich Pushkin

Conventional X-ray images (radiography) are defiantly less robust, compared to the CT. They are not calibrated with respect to the HU (like CT), so you should normalize them yourself, plus correct for different nonuniformities in the image. First, make sure that all of them were aquifer with the same protocol (exposure, kv, clinically task), look into difference between different scanners, etc. There were a lot of talks about use of radiomics for chest X-rays at the RSNA 2019, checking abstract or videos of the presentations might help. Good luck!

Just cite the paper and authors ...

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In addition to the right answer of C K Gomathy, with digital radiography a lot of analysis can be performed in order to optimize contrast and luminosity of the images, and moreover all the research in diagnostic imaging is based on digital image, mainly in dicom or nifti format.

Nowadays there are 2 type of digital imaging: direct and indirect; the first one has a direct conversion of X-ray in digital images (DR); the second one needs an external support to convert the X-ray in digital images (CR).

Hi. To follow loss of BMD in rats, I used pQCT for the tibia, and after completion of the experiment, microCT for the femur. the pQCT data should be compared to each animal baseline though.

Dear Dirk,

Thank you for your comment. I completely agree with your interpretation.

i think you can add variables like:

1. age of the participant

2. gender

3. Dosimeter values per time period (if calculated for a radiollgy staff)

4. Number of mandatory exposure breaks taken

5. Number of radiology procedureds done (fixed to a single type of procedure for a Group)

Dear Ayman, i understand your question, and believe there are little or no free products to do this. Are you talking educational resources?

We as a company i work for, Hermes Medical solutions have created several regional or international setups on a commercial product TeleHERMES that do allow using databases up to Terabytes and investigate all (even several native fields), and perform a lot of postprocessing. The TeleHERMES account will work as a local Hermes workstation. Depending on your needs, place you work and interests we can have a offline discussion. We have already installed multiple educational cloud accounts (some hundreds) for teaching institutions worldwide. This also for Inholland Hogeschool the Netherlands with 26 students and teachers simultaneous users on a Amsterdam server, Contact me when interested.

I recommend you use RadRat (https://dceg.cancer.gov/tools/risk-assessment/radrat). This is an online tool that uses BEIR VII models and allows estimation of LAR for different organs, patient age etc.

Part of the issue is framing the problem in a way that lends itself to parallelism, and that lends itself to attack by other types of hardware besides the CPU, like the integer and short float cores in a GPU.

Radiographic film contains emulsions with a very high sensitivity and the latent image is less stable than with low-sensitive films. Therefore it is recommend to process the film as soon as possible to avoid “Latent Image Regression”. see also:

 

There are 4 views that should be taken of an equine thorax: 1) craniodorsal, 2) caudodorsal, 3) cranioventral, and 4) caudoventral.

If you want calculate organ equivalent and effective dose from CT examinations you can use ImpactDose  software which developed by ImPACT group. The computation is done based on tables pre-computed for different scanners and selected anthropomorphic phantoms.

Another dose estimation software which is easy to use and not expensive is CT-expo developed by Dr. Georg Stamm. its user friendly and inexpensive. CT-expo in based on computational methods which were used to evaluate the data collected in the German surveys on CT practice. 

VirtualDose in another GPU-based Monte Carlo dose estimator which enables users to assess organ doses, in addition to CTDI and DLP data provided by the CT scanner.

for more information see below links: 

http://www.mh-hannover.de/fileadmin/kliniken/ diagnostische_radiologie/download/ct-expo-e.zip

Mr Sandeep Mittal

I am working out below two independent methods to arrive at the output of x-rays for a given combination of kV and mA. Please note that both these are only approximate but they do indicate the different approaches to the answers. Let us take the distance from the x-ray tube target to the point at which the output is required as 100 cm.

Method 1:

Let us assume kV = 60 and mA = 10; then power dissipated on the x-ray target is:

60 x 10 watts or 600 joules/sec = 600 x 10⁷ ergs/sec ……….(1)

The fraction of electron energy converted to bremmstralung (f) is given approximately by:

f = E_e x Z x 10^-6 (Z is the atomic number of target = 74 for tungsten; E_e is the electron energy in keV)(from medical physics literature).

Since the average energy of the unfiltered x-ray photon energy is one-third of the electron energy from Kramer’s equation, the photon energy available as bremmstralung therefore is:

Hence f = (60/3) x 74 x 10^-6 = 0.148% …………………………..(2)

Therefore the x-ray energy output at the target = (1) x (2) above = 0.888  x 10⁷ ergs/sec …… (3)

Assuming the x-ray distribution from the target is isotropic (valid for a thick target), the energy output at 100 cm is: [(3) above] / 4π (100²) = 0.0705 x 10³  ergs/sec/cm2 ………………(4)

Assuming the total (inherent + added) filtration in the tube is 3 mm:

For 60kV, 3mm filtration offers 2HVLs, since the first HVL is 1mm and the homogeneity coefficient is 0.5 (obtained from literature); Hence the attenuation offered by 3 mm Al = ¼ (0.25)

This leads to an output after filtration = [(4) above]/4  = 0.0176 x 10³ ergs/sec/cm² ……….(5)

To get the output air in R/sec at 1 meter, we have to multiply (5) above by the mass energy absorption coefficient of air for 60 kV with 3 mm filtration. For an unfiltered x-ray beam, Kramer’s Law gives an average energy of one-third kV; for a filtered(hardened) beam, let us assume the average energy as 30 keV (this is a valid approximation). The mass energy absorption coefficient µen /ρ for 30 keV x-rays = 0.1501 cm² /gm [From Hubbel’s 1982 revised 2012 data]…………….(6)

Therefore the output at 1m = [(5) x (6)]/ 87.7 [1 R = 87.7 ergs/gm of air] = 0.0301 R/sec  = 1.81 R/min…..(7)

This can be converted to air kerma in rads/sec by multiplying by 0.877

It may be noted the above derivation involves a number of approximations. Moreover, the values of  (µen /ρ) vary widely over the low keV region.

 Method II

This  method uses the RadPro calculator available free on-line. Here you have to enter the values of kV (60), mA (10), filtration(3 mm Al) and distance(100 cm) from the target to the point of measurement. This calculation then yields a value of 1.8719 x 10⁸ µR/hr = 187.19 R/hr = 187.19/3600 R/sec = 0.052 R/sec = 3.12 R/min ………………………….(8)

It may be noted that these values (7) and (8) above are obtained by altogether two different approaches and both involve approximations. Both these denote typical outputs of a fluoroscopic unit.

Please consult any radiation physics text or website for references cited above.

Hope this helps.Good Luck.

In my professional experience, I identified cases of Angina without obstruction mecanical.

Two cases of Angina with enzymes high and electrocardiogram changes, but without obstruction. Our conclusion was, coronarian spasm because adrenergic hyperativity.

Others cases with Angina with electrocardiogram changes but without enzymes changes was because coronaria ducking. When small segment of a coronary under segment of myocardium.

But I saw many cases of Angina with coronary arteries thin and tortuous, without obstruction.

Dear Dr. Anil,

Thanks for informing me about your confidence in getting the X-ray and accepting my request. I will be sending one of my specimen shortly.

Best regards 

If 3D information is needed for the management of the impacted tooth CBCT is indicated (This conclusion can be drawn on conventional X-ray imaging and clinical examination (palpation)).

If a 4cmx4cm volume is made with 90kV, low tubecurrent (2 to 3 mA) and limited arch rotation (180 degrees 9 seconds) this exposure can be made safely in children (dose aruond 10 micro Sievert).

This volume will not be crisp and sharp but it will give you the information at the lowest dose (ALADA as low as diagnostically acceptable).

If on the other hand the exposure is made with a large volume and custom parameters the dose can be 10 to 40 times higher.

İMAGE j FROM NIH SOFTWARE WILL BE HELPFUL

Hello Dr Cugy

I could not find any links that displayed the details that you need regarding video-urodynamic recordings. As I had looked for the info you need, I have included what I found, but expect that none of this is new knowledge for you. A lot of the data available related to pathology, not to normal findings.

In this International Continence Society document re urodynamics, the functional profile length (the length of the urethra along which the urethral pressure exceeds intravesical pressure in women) is shown in the diagram 6A p. 334:

This link has the statistics for the length and diameter of the male and female urethra, but these are not related specifically to urodynamic findings, and you will probably be aware of them:

This paper describes the bladder neck and the bladder neck on voiding, but not in great detail:

Lukacz, E. S., Sampselle, C., Gray, M., Macdiarmid, S., Rosenberg, M., Ellsworth, P., & Palmer, M. H. (2011). A healthy bladder: a consensus statement. International journal of clinical practice, 65(10), 1026-1036.

It could be that the authors who are in ResearchGate could help you further?

Very best wishes; I will follow your question, and hope that there are further answers that are of more help for your student's work,

Mary

Indeed, no safe periods with diagnostic exposures. The reason is the character of exposure, its stochastic. The repair of eventual damages is performed in hours.

Safe periods are needed in radiation therapy to give normal issues time for repair and regeneration.

another file

About patient thickness. Imagegently.org are recommending that you don`t use grid on patientthickness less than 12 cm. When the examination area involves mostly air, like the lungs, you can leave out the grid for even greater thickness than 12 cm.

Hi Albertina,

I am using a mobile x-ray system - Examion - DR Flexible. It has a wireless digital detector sending the aquired image directly to a laptop in secconds after exposure.

I have to mention that I work in a Museum examinig cultural heritage objects, normally in a stationary lab but from time to time we have to move out to our galleries or storerooms when the size of the examined object is too big to fit in our workshop. The biggest one we have done is 7 x 3 meters - 236 exposures stiched into one image.

Should you need more information please ask.

best wishes,

Michał

It is very difficult to give a general number, even by categories of application. The potential exposure will always depends on the radiological protection measures and on how the procedures are respected.

Public exposure should be totally excluded, except for exceptional accidents like the pne in Goiania, for instance (if you Google it you will find the IAEA report on it). Personnel exposure will depend on the safety culture of the organisation. One example of accident in the industrial radiography (it reproduces a real instance): the warning signals that indicate that the source is not in the shielded position malfunction and the source remains out in an unshielded position, yet undetectable to the naked eye. The workers enter to inspect the pipe and to do other work, but they do not wear the compulsory PADs so they have no idea the source is still in exposed position. As a result, a number of workers were exposed to doses between a few 10ths of mGy to a 1-2 Gy. The accident would have been easily avoid if the workers would have worn the PADs or the RSO would have inspected the site prior to allowing the workers in.

In theory the procedures were there, and the accident had a close to 0 probability but, because nobody followed the rules, it happened. 

To conclude, it is hard to pin a number on situations that depend heavily on human behaviour,

I wrote simple program for measurement of Cobb's angle from any pictures on the PC screen. It's for Windows system. It's free on web site www.anglespine.com.

The program would be useful for you.

Once again the gold standard is closed reduction and stable fixation as soon as possible. Even on emergency base if the facility has experienced surgeons at disposal any time. Open reduction is an exception, and it should be done only if the closed reduction fails.

CBCT is the best method for evaluating the jaws for implant planning because you can evaluate the bone in 3 dimensions but in panoramic you can't evaluate the jaws  buccolingually. linear measurment in panoramic radiograph isn't  accurate but in CBCT is accurate. 

It´s very plausible, but I don´t know any quantitative algorithm.

The prologing of fields is no real dose problem, because modern thorac radiographs belong besides the teeth pictures to the real low dose expositions.

Application of labelled nutrient into a plants parts such as root system, is very common to study the distribution of nutrient into different plant parts. In my view, this kind of method could also be performed to examine redistribution of nutrient into an implants. Namaste. 

I am not aware of any studies. The EPA in South Australia feels that the dose from intra-oral x-rays is so low that monitoring is probably not necessary.  I think you would need an unreasonable amount of intra-oral films to cause cancer.

Is  sex  determination  with  lateral  cephalogram  really  reliable? I  know  that  there  are  works  dealing  with  cephalic  index  to  determine  race  but  for  sex,  I  don't  know  how  feasible  that  would  be  with  mere  cephalograms  in  humans.

Have  you  tried  doing  the  closed  reduction  and  necessary  radio-ulna joint  manipulations  using  theatre  C-Arm  fluoroscopy  unit?  I  think  you  may  have  reliable  results.

As a first step you have to calculate the absorption, beam hardening and scattering properties with the ICRP model (Adam and Eve and a child). As a second step you can calculate with different materials and thicknesses how close they match the ICRP model. If phantoms should be designed to check the image quality the beam characteristic and scattering has a dominat role; the absorption is not of interest, means the entrance dose.of the phantom. Only in that manner the dose at receptor represents the clinical situation. In general different combinations of PMMA, Al, CF2 and air gaps  can be used to simulate the interaction of human tissue and X rays.

Preliminary clinical evaluation and definitive reporting by appropriately trained radiographers has been shown to improve patient outcomes and streamline care. The evidence base underpinning skeletal reporting by qualified radiographers is definitive (Brealey et al Clin Radiol 2005; Piper et al Radiography 2005) and there is a growing evidence base supporting chest x-ray interpretation (Piper et al Radiography 2014; Woznitza et al Radiography 2014). A recent service evaluation (Woznitza et al Radiography 2014) has illustrated the contribution that reporting radiographers and sonographers make in the delivery of an effective, efficient and patient focused service.  In low resource setting, and with appropriate training and support, radiographers could provide a 'total' system of image acquisition and reporting of plain imaging and ultrasound examinations, improving the service provided to patients and referring clinicians with a prompt and accurate report. This would also enable limited radiologist resources to be dedicated to complex imaging and interventional procedures. Education and collaboration are key.

Dear Sergei,

As you mentioned correctly, kissing-bond is a hard to detect defect by X-ray. Already I read a paper in this field and you can find it below:

I think the authors of this paper probably can help you.

Thanks Nittin Choudhary. Your reply made me to think about using the NOSQL. In addition, i was searching for the Medical Stereo images of CT and MRI. I suppose, the latest invention by the CAT and Siemens instruments are supporting to produce medical stereo radiography for the improving diagnosis accuracy. If you know about the these kind of image dataset, let me know.

And also i was looking for volume rendered stereo images for my work. If suppose, you have any idea about this kind of images database in internet or anybody possesses this images, kindly let me know .

This is not only a function of kVp, but rather of "beam quality", which can be described by kVp AND filtration (or by HVL). Additionally, backscatter for the same beam will be different for different materials. See Appendix VIII in the IAEA report 457 - one table is attached, you can download full report from the IAEA site:

EDIT: additionally, backscatter will depend on the field size.

A study to “identify pulpitis at dental X-ray periapical radiography based on edge detection, texture description and artificial neural network” by Tumbelaka B.Y. et al (the report of the study enclosed as an attachment) might be considered as an attempt to diagnose pulpitis radiographically.