Introduction of guidance dose levels inpaediatrics CT

The purpose of this work is to present a methodology in order to define reference levels for chest or abdominal CT examinations performed on children. For children aged from 0 to 6 the CTDIw measured in the head test object (i.e. diameter 16 cm) should be used as a dose indicator. For children older than 12 years old the CTDIw measured in the body test object (i.e. 32 cm) should be used as a dose indicator. For children aged between 6 to 12 we propose to use an intermediate CTDIw in order to avoid an over or underestimation of the dose delivered in the slices. Finally a set of dose length products (DLP) measured in our centre for standard abdominal acquisitions will be given. (author)