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Nt1310 Unit 3

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1. Esoteric protocol: A set of acquisition parameters was categorized as esoteric if the protocol and series name was utilized only once in the entire data set and was not changed at scan time. 2. Unusual patient position: If an exam had a scan field of view (SFOV) that was larger than the SFOV in the scanner protocol and the patient was in an unusual patient position during the exam, they would be included in this class. For example, if the patient was post esophagectomy or kyphotic and could not lie down for a head scan, the scan field of view would need to be changed from a head to a small, medium, or even a large body. 3. Turbo button: The Turbo Button is a UW-Madison specific option that a radiologist selects on our protocoling system (Epic Systems, Verona, WI). The purpose of the turbo option is to reduce noise relative to the standard protocol. This option is intended for a small subset of our routine patient population, mostly made up of cancer follow up patients with lesions known to be of subtle in appearance. To implement the Turbo …show more content…

AEC maxed out: GE’s automatic exposure control (AEC) tools, SmartmA and AutomA, select tube current levels during an exam between minimum and maximum tube current limits based upon the patient habitus as interpreted from the last acquired CT localizer radiograph. If the noise index requested for an image is lower than is allowed by the maximum tube current, the AEC will choose the maximum tube current throughout the scan. This infrequent occurrence can happen due to patient positioning which increases patient dose [17, 18, 31, 32], improperly chosen or set-up protocol [21, 33], or large patient size. If a scan is maxed out in mA for the entire scan, then the average and the maximum mA values will be identical. In such a case, we classify the protocol as having either a manual mA technique or being “maxed out”. If the maximum mA and the average are not equal, then we classify the irradiation event as having utilized

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