Mosby Protection-Safety Practice Test

Air kerma captures how much energy from the radiation is transferred to charged particles within a small mass of air at a specific location. In other words, it measures the kinetic energy released in air per unit mass as photons interact and knock electrons loose. This makes it a fundamental beam quantity for characterizing X-ray beams and linking the incoming photon energy to the initial energy that would eventually be deposited in matter. It’s not the dose absorbed by tissue, nor is it the total energy over an area or the risk-weighted dose across the body. Dose Area Product, Effective Dose, and Entrance Skin Dose refer to those other ideas, while air kerma focuses on energy transfer to air at a point.