Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2020
Keywords:
Performed at one institution, Not applicable, Retrospective, Quality assurance, Radiation safety, Fluoroscopy, Digital radiography, CT, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Paediatric, Action 4 - Dose management systems
Authors:
C. Kelly, J. Goracy, I. Delakis, C. Owens
DOI:
10.26044/esi2020/ESI-01968
Conclusion and recommendations
Investigation of alerts generated by the dose monitoring system lead to a review of protocols and workflows with the help of radiographers, radiologists and medical physics, and resulted in a number of improvements, summarized in Figure 3. Through a combination of education and changes to equipment configuration, the number of alerts has significantly reduced in all modalities indicating a clear trend of continuous dose optimization.
As our facility is new and local Diagnostic Reference Levels were not available, the alerts were based on the National Diagnostic Reference Levels. However, once we have collected enough data to establish statistically valid local Diagnostic Reference Levels, alerts will be adjusted to reflect local dose constraints. This is expected to help us identify further areas of improvement.
Our work has demonstrated that careful and comprehensive use of a dose monitoring system can highlight areas for improvement in the radiology department in terms of dose optimization. Close collaboration is required between radiographers, radiologists, and medical physics to implement changes towards dose optimization.