A key goal in a newborn nursery is to establish the
optimal exposure for each exam type, then to assure that exposure is consistent over time, without significant drift
up or down in exposure index. In a perfect system, the
deviation index should be close to 0. The exposure index
and deviation index are excellent tools to monitor the
consistency of patient exposures, as measured by exit
dose to the detector, for chest radiographs, on large
numbers of neonatal patients. The method is intuitive
and easily implemented. When used in conjunction with
the Gammex neonatal phantom, changes in exposure can
be identified and corrective action can be taken before
they become clinically significant. If very high deviation
indices were to be found in the future, our system would
allow us to track them to specific days of the week,
specific technologist shifts, or even to one individual
technologist.