The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) have selected the best paper published in Medical Physics in 2012 — “Effects of protocol and obesity on dose conversion factors in adult body CT.” This honor will be marked with receipt of the prestigious Farrington Daniels Award, which is bestowed yearly to the authors of the most outstanding paper on radiation dosimetry.
Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering authors Tilak Ratnanather, D.Phil, and graduate student Daniel Tward will be presented with the award in a ceremony on August 5, 2013, in Indianapolis, IN. Both Ratnanather and Tward are associated with the Center for Imaging Science.
In the paper the researchers concluded that obesity has a significant effect on computed tomography dose and risk conversion coefficients — which cannot be predicted using body diameter alone — and that size-specific dose estimates generally overestimate organ dose for obese patients.