An Attempt to Establish National Dose Reference Levels for Head CT - Scan Examinations in Indonesia : Preliminary Results from Malang Hospitals

CT-scanners are becoming more and more popular imaging modality amongst medical practitioners as their tools for diagnostic practices. Yet, since CT-scanners employ ionizing x-ray beam as the source of imaging light, protection against its damaging effects must be observed closely to ensure that the harmful effects to patients are minimum. Our study involved three Departments of Radiology in three major hospitals in the city of Malang, East Java, Indonesia. We took at least 100 (50 males and 50 females) patients who were sent to the department CT facility to have non-contrast head CT examination in each hospital. The effective dose of each patient was calculated using the CTDosimetry version 1.0.4 dose calculator software. Our results reveal that the effective doses received by patients were in range 1.25 – 2.51 mSv for male patients and 1.14 – 2.39 mSv for female patients. In general, male patients received more doses than the female counterparts as predicted. Index Term— CT-scanner, ionizing x-ray beam, radiodiagnostic, medical imaging