Relative dose levels (ie, tube current), as compared with our clinical settings, for b values of
0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 1 for patient widths from 12 to 50 cm are shown in Table 1, where a lateral
thickness of 36 cm was used as our standard reference for patient size. To maintain a
constant noise level (b = 1), the dose to a 12-cm-wide patient would be 5% of our typical
clinical value. For a 50-cm-wide patient, the dose would be 549% of our typically
administered dose. (Neither of these options is technically feasible on current CT systems.)