Introduction: Abdominal imaging is classified as an examination where the patient receives a large increase in ionizing radiation to obtain an image of the interior of the abdominal cavity. The dose can be reduced by the correct choice of exposure conditions, the correct shielding of the image field, the use of filtration and the correct projection. Purpose: The aim is to determine what the product of dose and image pole area (DAP), entrance skin dose (VKD), effective doses (E) and doses to organs are when imaging the abdomen with different thicknesses of copper filtration (0mm, 0.1mm, 0.2mm and 0.3mm). It is also intended to determine whether the thickness of the filter affects and changes the quality of the image. Methods: We conducted the research in two parts. In the first part of the research, we measured DAP, VKD, E, image quality on the phantom, where we took 5 images for each group of copper filtration - a total of 20 images. The second part of the research was conducted on 200 patients who were referred for abdominal X-rays. In all patients, weight and height were recorded for the calculation of body mass index (BMI), and at the same time we also compared DAP, VKD, E, dose to organs. At the end, all radiographs were independently evaluated by three specialist radiologists employed at Slovenj Gradec General Hospital. Results and discussion: The research showed that there were no statistically significant differences in the DAP measurements both on the phantom and on the patients, and there were also no statistically significant differences in the VKD calculations. When measuring the effective dose on the phantom, we found statistically significant differences (p=0.046), while there were no statistically significant differences on the patients (p=0.108). The average absorbed dose on the spleen (p=0.021), kidney (p=0.007), adrenal gland (p=0.016) and bone marrow (p=0.029) is higher or there are statistically significant differences when using different thick copper filters. There were no statistically significant differences between raters in the assessment of image quality. Conclusion: The results showed that there were no statistically significant differences in any of the measured parameters, except for the mentioned organs. The effect of additional copper filtration in our case does not affect the doses received by the patients and the quality of the images, which is presumable the effect of higher source to image receptor distance.
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