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Phantom study of a self-shielded X-ray bone age assessment instrument against scattered radiation in children

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Abstract

Hand-wrist radiography is the most common and accurate method for evaluating children’s bone age. To reduce the scattered radiation of radiosensitive organs in bone age assessment, we designed a small X-ray instrument with radioprotection function by adding metal enclosure for X-ray shielding. We used a phantom operator to compare the scattered radiation doses received by sensitive organs under three different protection scenarios (proposed instrument, radiation personal protective equipment, no protection). The proposed instrument showed greater reduction in the mean dose of a single exposure compared with radiation personal protective equipment especially on the left side which was proximal to the X-ray machine (≥80.0% in eye and thyroid,  ≥99.9% in breast and gonad). The proposed instrument provides a new pathway towards more convenient and efficient radioprotection.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are freely available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the colleagues from the Department of Radiology of The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University for their assistance in setting the experiment environment.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFE0198400) and by the Medical Health Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission (Grant No. 2021PY008). The funders played no role in data collection, interpreting the data, and writing of the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Xinhong Wang, Mengxi Xu, and Huayong Zhu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China

    Xinhong Wang, Mengxi Xu, Linlin Ma, Cong Chen, Xiaoli Yu, Lijian Wang & Xiaoxiao Cai

  2. Department of Radiology, Taizhou Hospital of Zhejiang Province Affiliated to Wenzhou Medical University, Taizhou, China

    Huayong Zhu

  3. Hangzhou Mednova Medical Technologies Co., Ltd, Hangzhou, China

    Qing Jiang & Weihong Wu

  4. Department of Medical Imaging, Army 75 Group Military Hospital, Dali, China

    Daoxi Hu

  5. Department of Critical Care Medicine, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, 150 JiMo Road, Shanghai, China

    Wei Zhou

  6. S.M.U. Medical Equipment Test Co., Ltd, Guangzhou, China

    Rongmin Chen & Lili Gao

  7. Research Centre for Intelligent Healthcare, Coventry University, Coventry, CV1 5RW, UK

    Haipeng Liu

  8. Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, 38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Ling Xia

Authors
  1. Xinhong Wang
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  2. Mengxi Xu
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  3. Huayong Zhu
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  4. Linlin Ma
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  5. Cong Chen
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  6. Qing Jiang
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  7. Weihong Wu
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  8. Daoxi Hu
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  9. Wei Zhou
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  10. Rongmin Chen
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  11. Lili Gao
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  12. Xiaoli Yu
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  13. Lijian Wang
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  14. Xiaoxiao Cai
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  15. Haipeng Liu
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  16. Ling Xia
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Contributions

X.W. conceived the study and drafted the manuscript. R.C. supplied the data. M.X. and H.L. analyzed the data and critically reviewed the manuscript. H.L. and L.X. critically reviewed the manuscript and supervised the study. All contributed to the discussion and revision of the manuscript and approved the final version.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Haipeng Liu or Ling Xia.

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Wang, X., Xu, M., Zhu, H. et al. Phantom study of a self-shielded X-ray bone age assessment instrument against scattered radiation in children. Pediatr Radiol 54, 646–652 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00247-024-05897-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00247-024-05897-6

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