Digital mobile radiography of the chest.

Abstract

Mobile chest radiography is the most request mobile radiographic examination requested. There are various devices that can be used in order to be carried out. The introduction of digital radiography has made possible a great and vast improvement in order to be able to succumb the difficulties imposed by the uneasiness to obtain an ideal image of the chest especially when carried out with mobile devices. Although there are mainly two different systems available for digital mobile chest radiography but most hospitals only have Computed Radiography mobile systems available. This is mainly due to financial issues as Direct Digital mobile systems tend to be more expensive. As a radiographer who works in the theatre and mobile radiography unit, the researcher's interest is to raise the issue of improving patient care in terms of better image quality and diagnosis value in order to justify the use of more expensive mobile equipment. This was done by evaluating and comparing a CR system and with a DDR mobile system in terms of visible line pairs per mm to evaluate spatial resolution and visible contrast densities to evaluate contrast resolution. The results show that the DDR system consistently provided better spatial and contrast resolution when compared to the CR system at all stages of the study. Particular limitations and patterns were noted when comparing the different systems. This study should finally encourage its readers to prefer the direct digital mobile chest radiography systems as it is the modality of choice for obtaining the digital images when carrying out mobile chest radiographic examinations.