The article lead read:
"Recent advances include the digitization of the images captured and flat panel detector systems which reduce the radiation dose to the patient still further."
Neither digitization nor flattening the detector panel inherently affect radiation dose. Maybe these configurations are associated with higher instrument sensitivities, that allow lower radiation doses to effectively be used.
—DIV (137.111.13.36 (talk) 02:02, 12 December 2013 (UTC))[reply]
This is now better addressed in the article. According to what I have read, the main reason that flat panel detectors allow reduced radiation dose for the same or better image quality is that they are more sensitive than X-ray image intensifiers; they do more with the same input (make better use of it). This is covered in the main article (flat panel detector) and in this article at Fluoroscopy#Flat-panel detectors. The main reason that digital imaging allows reduced radiation dose for the same or better image quality is that digital image processing and image analysis software make better use of the input (because signal processing can take tiny inputs from low radiation doses and amplify them while to some extent also differentiating signal from noise). Thus they, too, in their own way, do more with the same input (make better use of it). I am far from expert on these topics, but today in this article I merely brought together existing information and augmented it based on reading and lookup. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:34, 14 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
