CLINICAL EVALUATION OF A NEW PORTABLE UNIT RADIOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUE

Two new portable radiographic units employing a radionuclide (iodine 125) source and Polaroid Land films with an intensifying or fluoroscopic screen were assembled and evaluated clinically.

The units are small, light in weight, simple to operate and completely independent of both electrical power and darkroom facilities.

The energy of the radiation emitted by the source, predominantly 22 to 35 kev., is best suited to the examination of the hand, wrist, forearm, foot, jaws (unilateral) and foreign bodies or calcifications in soft tissue masses.

Of the film-screen combinations tested, Polaroid Types 57 or 107 Land films with a Du Pont Lightning Special intensifying screen were chosen as the best compromise of the conflicting demands for good image quality and reasonable exposure times with a source of limited output.

The skin dose incurred by the subject with the portable units is less than 4 per cent of that for making comparable roentgenograms with a conventional roentgen ray tube and Kodak Kodirex film.

While many common types of fractures can be detected using the portable radiographic unit technique, the limit of the diagnostic usefulness of these radiographs lies short of the demonstration of fractures in which little or no displacement of the fragments has occurred. Blurring due to subject movement is also a problem as the exposure times are relatively long and must be increased with time to compensate for the decay of the radionuclide.

Despite these limitations, these portable units should be quite useful in situations in which radiographic diagnosis would otherwise be impossible and, in addition, in the fields of forensic medicine and materials inspection, where exposure times of several minutes or more can easily be tolerated.

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