This International Standard applies to test procedures which, for the determination of characteristics of systems or components of medical diagnostic X-ray equipment, require well-defined radiation conditions.

Except for mammography, this standard does not apply to conditions where discontinuities in radiation absorption of elements are deliberately used to modify properties of the radiation beam (for example by rare earth filters).

This standard deals with methods for generating radiation beams with radiation conditions which can be used under test conditions typically found in test laboratories or in manufacturing facilities for the determination of characteristics of medical diagnostic X-ray equipment.

Examples of such radiation qualities are radiation beams emerging through the filtration from the X-ray source assembly. radiation conditions represent the more general case, where scattered radiation emerges from an exit surface of a patient or a phantom. This requires a well defined geometrical arrangement.