Читать книгу A Comprehensive Guide to Radiographic Sciences and Technology - Euclid Seeram - Страница 17

The physics of diagnostic imaging is an important and vital topic that explains the nature of how these imaging modalities work to produce diagnostic images of the patient. Understanding the fundamental physics will provide the user with the tools not only needed to produce optimum image quality but more importantly to protect the patient from unnecessary radiation. As such, it is now a common characteristic of imaging departments to optimize radiation dose and work within the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) philosophy of as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) to reduce the dose to the patient but not compromise the diagnostic quality of the images used to make a diagnosis of the patient's medical condition.

In this book, the topics in physics that will emphasize the imaging modalities are the nature of radiation, x‐ray generation, x‐ray production, x‐ray emission, x‐ray attenuation, and x‐ray interaction with matter. Furthermore, other physics topics of significance are radiation quantities and their associated units and measurement concepts. These topics and more fall in the domain of Health Physics. Three radiation quantities that are important to radiation protection of the patient are exposure, absorbed dose, and effective dose (ED). The units associated with each of these include coulombs per kilogram (C/kg), Grays (Gy), and Sieverts (Sv), respectively. In order to measure radiation, it must first be detected.