13th International Congress of the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA) in Glasgow, 13-18 May 2012

The transition from conventional screen-film radiography (SFR) to computed radiography (CR) or digital radiography (DR) can involve an increase in patient radiation doses due to the wide dynamic range of the digital imaging systems, which allows overexposure with no adverse effect on image quality. The current study intends to measure and compare the radiation dose to adult patients during (i) chest (CXR) (ii) lumbar spine (LS) (iii) others; in three hospital in Khartoum state , Sudan. Using: (i) conventional (screen-Flim) radiography (ii) computed radiography (iii) digital radiography. Entrance surface doses (ESDs) were calculated from patient exposure parameters using DosCal software for three imaging modalities. A total of 202 patients were studied (115 CXR, 78 LS and 9 others).The mean ESDs were 1.77±0.01 mGy for the AP/LS, 5.39±0.16 mGy for LA/LS and0.07±0.02mGy for the CXR in SFR. The mean ESDs were 2.54±0.05 mGy for the AP/LS, 1.55mGy for LA/LS and 0.11±0.01 for the CXR in CR and The mean ESDs were 1.16±0.44 for the AP/LS, 1.72±0.45mGy for LA/LS,0.06±0.04mGY for the CXR and 0.2±0.13mGy for other in DR. The ratio of ESDs for CR to SFR was +44%, +26% and +57% higher than those for DR to SFR were -34%, -60% and -14% for AP/Ls, LA/Ls and CXR respectively. Patient dose in DR were lower than other two imaging modalities. CR dose values were higher than the other two modalities. LS patient dose values were lower than the majority previous studies in all modalities and so CXR doses too. Radiation dose optimization is highly required.