Hospitals and other imaging facilities across the nation are employing new scanning technology and protocols to reduce and track the radiation doses delivered to patients during imaging studies. The developing trend joins ongoing efforts to help physicians and patients rethink when to opt for advanced imaging tests.

More than two dozen U.S. hospitals have adopted a lower-dose method of reconstructing the images obtained through computed tomography. The technology, marketed as Veo and launched by General Electric Co. subsidiary GE Healthcare in December 2011, can help capture a chest CT scan that delivers virtually the same radiation dose as a two-view chest x-ray. Older CT scanning technology sometimes delivers as much as 50 times the radiation dose of an x-ray.

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