Abstract
In a report of the British National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), radiation monitoring has been recommended as an essential item for the quality assurance program in diagnostic radiology. Our research objectives are to optimize the digital radiography by looking for the most suitable technical factors, obtaining the balance between image quality and radiation dose, and analyzing the optimization conditions. The entrance surface dose and dose-area product were used as dose indices to determine effective doses. Image quality was obtained subjectively. Three radiologists scored the images according to the image criteria recommended in the European guidelines, EUR 16260. The optimization analysis was then applied to determine the optimized technical factors for the chest PA radiography in a given hospital. Our results indicate that using high tube potential and appropriate field size can significantly reduce the effective dose, yet achieving similar image quality in chest PA examination. Besides, to improve the quality of the diagnostic radiology, the calibration of light field and automatic exposure control device should be performed periodically.