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Thursday, October 4, 2018

The use of X-rays in medical diagnosis gives rise to an increased exposure of the patient to radiation.


Question 2
The use of X-rays in medical diagnosis gives rise to an increased exposure of the patient to radiation.
Explain why
(a) an aluminium filter may be placed in the X-ray beam when producing an X-ray image of a patient, [3]

(b) the radiation dose received by a patient is different for a CT scan from that for a simple X-ray image. [4]





Reference: Past Exam Paper – November 2014 Paper 41 & 42 Q11





Solution:
(a)
The X-ray beam contains many wavelengths (a spectrum of wavelengths).
The aluminium filter absorbs long wavelength X-ray radiation that would be absorbed by the body (and not contribute to the image).


(b)
CT scan consists of (many) X-ray images of a slice             and there are many slices.
So, there is a much greater exposure with CT scan as X-ray image is a single exposure.

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