Design, development, and evaluation of a medical system for estimating dosimetry levels in a public hospital

Abstract

Several studies have found that radiation exposure can negatively affect health, being imaging studies one of the main reasons for radiation exposure. Currently, most public hospitals do not use specific tools for estimating the radiation level (dosimetry level) that a patient has before requesting an imaging study. Instead, the physicians use their experience in deciding to request a specific imaging study. In this paper, we present the design, development, and evaluation of a system for estimating patients' dosimetry levels to be used when physicians request patients' imaging studies. We evaluated the system with ten physicians in a public hospital. Our results show that the proposed system has the potential to be integrated into the current medical practices of the public hospital.