An additional method for reducing maternal and fetal radiation exposure is the establishment of multidisciplinary guidelines for imaging pregnant patients. This can limit the number of incremental fetal exposures due to redundant or sequential examinations. Radiation exposure can be significantly reduced by establishing specific low-dose imaging algorithms for common abdominal diseases such as symptomatic urinary tract stone disease or abdominal pain with suspected appendicitis.
The maximal radiation exposure to the fetus occurs with direct maternal abdominal/pelvic radiologic examinations. Patient size variations may allow reduced exposure parameters. While reduction of exposure factors may decrease the absorbed dose to the fetus from a standard maternal diagnostic examination, those changes increase image noise which can reduce image quality. A low-dose limited examination should not lower the dose to the extent that would interfere with obtaining the needed diagnostic information.