The new International Basic Safety Standards [1] and the European Directive 59/2013 [2] underline the need for dose monitoring and optimization for all radiological imaging procedures with a special focus on high radiation dose techniques such as CT and interventional radiology (IR) and cardiology (IC) examinations. However, continuous dose monitoring can be time consuming, cumbersome task with patient data limited to radiation dose values specially in older radiological imaging X-ray machines. Nowadays, sophisticated software, that can be either free or commercial, with friendly interface assist...

There is a big variety of free or commercial DMS in the international market. After careful consideration, the authors decided to proceed solely with commercial software. The main reasons for this decision was a) the intension to perform a more sophisticated data analysis then just simply track radiation dose or comply with regulations and b) the limited experience of the information technology (IT) team related to the subject. The hospital evaluated extensively 3 DMS for approximately 5 years by direct installation within the hospital and...

The routine use of DMS facilitated quick and extensive analysis for enormous amount of data, which was not possible previously. Collection and analysis before DMS was still possible of course but due to manual cumbersome work, this would include a small number of patients with limited data per patient. This had to be done by the radiographer or the medical physicist, both of them routinely engaged with routine work in the radiology department. The DMS offered a user-friendly interface and its tools proved very helpful...

V. Tsapaki, Konstantopoulio General Hospital Athens/GR The authors acknowledge the various commercial companies that provided all technical support and their collaboration during the whole process of software evaluation.

Radiation Protection and Safety of Radiation Sources: International Basic Safety Standards General Safety Requirements International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safety Standards Series No. GSR Part 3, Vienna, 2014. Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom 2014 Basic safety standards for protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionising radiation and repealing Directives 89/618/Euratom, 90/641/Euratom, 96/29/Euratom, 97/43/Euratom and 2003/122/Euratom. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), 2017. Diagnostic reference levels in medical imaging. ICRP Publication 135. Ann. ICRP 46(1). Chatzoglou V, Kottou S,...