Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2016
Keywords:
Action 3 - Optimisation, diagnostic reference levels, image quality, Action 2 - Clinical diagnostic reference levels (DRLs)
Authors:
S. Schindera, A. Euler, A. Parakh
DOI:
10.1594/esi2016/ESI-0036
Background/Introduction
Rising use of computed tomography (CT) has been documented due to its ubiquitous presence,
ease of operation,
short acquisition time,
emerging applications and positive impact on patient throughput.
Over the past 30 years the utilization of CT in the U.S.
has been steadily growing at the rate of approximately 10% per year,
approaching 80 million scans per annum (1).
The rapid expansion comes at a cost of a higher radiation burden in comparison to other imaging modalities.
In Switzerland,
albeit responsible for only 6% of diagnostic studies using ionizing radiation in 2008,
CT was accountable for 68% of the annual medical radiation exposure (2).
Such numbers indicate CT as a particular focus for patient protection initiatives and call for accountability.
The main methods to address the increasing doses,
until recently,
have been proper justification of clinical examinations,
optimization of scans and development of dose efficient technologies.
The value of dose tracking and management has been largely over-sighted by virtue it of being a complex,
manual and time-consuming task.
With the development of radiation dose tracking softwares (RTS),
it is now feasible to create a comprehensive CT dose management program since they can seamlessly parse volumes of data into comprehensible user-friendly meaningful reports with improved statistical certainty and reliability.
RTS can track,
analyze and archive various dose-metrics to obtain an aggregation of big-data and can therefore also help in creation of dose-registries that can be used for benchmarking.
We decided to develop a regional CT dose registry in Switzerland using an RTS with the aim to systematically track the doses of all CT scans performed at six different institutes and to compare the inter-institutional radiation doses.
This data is then being used to perform meaningful benchmarking at local and national diagnostic reference levels.