Radiation Exposure and Cancer Risk in Infant CT Scans Using Mobile MOSFET
This study investigates radiation exposure and cancer risk in infant head CT scans using mobile MOSFET at the University Hospital Sharjah. Two CT scanners, Siemens SOMATOM Definition AS and Hitachi Supria Plus, were evaluated under identical scanning protocols. The Hitachi scanner delivered higher doses across all tissues. The estimated effective dose was 6.3 mSv for Hitachi and 4.5 mSv for Siemens, corresponding to lifetime cancer risks of 3.5 and 2.5 cases per 10,000 scans, respectively. The study also evaluates the impact of varying tube voltage and effective milliampere-seconds on radiation dose and image quality to identify optimal scanning parameters that minimize radiation exposure while maintaining diagnostic-quality images. Increasing the voltage from 80 to 140 kV raised the estimated effective dose from 0.74 to 3.32 mSv, with lifetime cancer risk increasing from 0.7 to 3.3 cases per 10,000 scans. Similarly, increasing the effective mAs from 100 to 250 mAs raised the dose from 1.02 to 2.77 mSv and the risk from 1.1 to 3.0 cases per 10,000 scans. In both cases, image quality improved as reflected by increased SNR and CNR values. These findings highlight the need for protocol optimization in infants’ CT imaging to maintain diagnostic quality while minimizing radiation exposure.

