Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2019
Keywords:
Action 2 - Clinical diagnostic reference levels (DRLs), Action 4 - Dose management systems, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, CT, Dosimetry, Dosimetric comparison
Authors:
E. Balázs, Z. Dankó, P. Bágyi, E. Lilla, L. Balkay, L. Urbán
DOI:
10.26044/esi2019/ESI-0086
Background/introduction
Radiation safety is one of the most emerging issues in radiology.
Computer tomography is responsible for a large amount of radiation exposure to patients,
but due to its availability and versatile practical applications,
it is an indispensable diagnostic tool.
Thus it is important to monitor and analyze patient dose levels by incorporating different local regulators.
Following the requirements of the latest EU BSS directive [1],
it is vital to create local institutional protocols to standardize the imaging procedures,
and where appropriate,
establish diagnostic reference levels.
A diagnostic reference level (DRL) represents the appropriate dose at which an imaging test should carried out.
The goal is to identify dose levels that may be unnecessarily high,
and to specify those situations where dose may be reduced without compromising image quality.
[2]
Our aim was to develop a local institutional CT dose registry in the city of Debrecen using a self-developed dose management software.
With this software we systematically track the doses of CT scans performed at our two scanners which allows us to compare the radiation doses.
We use the gathered data to benchmark local and,
in the future,
national diagnostic reference levels.
This study was a collaboration between medical physics experts,
radiologists and radiographers with the aim to determine local DRLs for the most frequent CT examinations and to investigate achievable doses.