Standardization versus individualization: how each contributes to managing dose in computed tomography.

Dose management in medical imaging is about using the right dose for the specific patient and the specific diagnostic task; since patients and diagnostic tasks vary widely, the applied doses must also vary widely. Thus, a large amount of the variation observed in the computed tomography (CT) doses applied in medical imaging is appropriate. However, unacceptable sources of variations also exist. For similar sized patients and similar diagnostic tasks, variations in the applied doses should be small. It is the responsibility of the medical professionals in the imaging community, therefore, to ensure appropriate variations while minimizing unacceptable variations. That is, imaging professionals must make it standard practice to optimize scan parameters in a way that is specific to both patient size and diagnostic task.