Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2019
Keywords:
Action 4 - Dose management systems, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, CT, Digital radiography, Radiation safety, Image registration, Image verification
Authors:
N. Denjoy, R. Corridori
DOI:
10.26044/esi2019/ESI-0069
Background/introduction
Medical imaging devices companies have a track record of improving the radiation safety of radiological devices by developing dose reduction features and providing training.
A study recently published on the British Journal of Medicine1 confirmed that there is an extreme variation in dose levels used for CT scans,
potentially exposing patients to unnecessary radiation.
The study bases its findings on the analysis of dose data for more than 2 million CT scans,
from 151 institutions in seven countries.
Radiation doses vary greatly across countries depending on national choices and guidelines,
rather than patient,
institution,
or machine characteristics.
The study suggests that there is a great potential to further reduce the dose through the creation of consistent standards.
Functional to those standards,
the collection of standardized data across all countries.
Dose Management Systems are the right tool to collect and analyse dose data and the next step to increase radiation protection,
to evaluate hospitals and clinic practices and to ensure dose is as low as reasonably achievable.