CT Dose optimisation Quality Improvement Activity

Project Officer: Ms Tina Soblusky, Senior Project Officer, Skills Development Centre, Qld Health

Project leader: Dr Anthony Wallace, radiation physicist,  Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA)

This project was a partnership between Queensland Health, ARPANSA and the QUDI Program. Ten private and public sector radiology practices in QLD were recruited to under take an audit of their CT dose data in adults and children using an online tool developed by Geethal Data Systems for the QUDI program.

An interactive workshop was held in February 2009 attended by a radiologist and radiographer from each participating radiology practice. Feedback was provided to each practice about their own performance, and compared it in a de-identified manner to the other practices. Expert physicists then provided information and discussed how to optimise the radiation dose - focusing on achieving a diagnostic quality image, with the least possible dose. A re-audit of the participaing sites took place in April - May 2009. Following analysis, results showing the change in radiation dose following the optimisation processes were then provided to each participating site.

Resources from the optimisation workshop include:

This approach to quality improvement has been shown to be effective in reducing dose delivered by paediatric CT scanning in a previous QUDI project: Paediatric CT Dose Optimisation Project.