Improving pediatric radiation dose management using Agfa digital radiography DICOM header information.

Dose reduction in pediatric explorations is especially important because of children radiation sensitivity. According to this, with the aim of saving radiation exposure in future clinical practice, we have developed a technique to control delivered dose in pediatric radiographic exams. To that, a computer science program has been developed to calculate entrance skin dose (ESD) provided by AGFA radiology digital system, using the "lgM" parameter exported from Dicom files. ESD values are compared with dose limits established in regulations to detect if children are being exposed to excessive amounts of radiation during their explorations.