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TU‐B‐211‐02: Patient Radiation Exposure Tracking
Author(s) -
Pavlicek W
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.3613112
Subject(s) - standardization , medical imaging , medical physics , modality (human–computer interaction) , dicom , computer science , quality assurance , informatics , medical radiation , radiation dose , medicine , information retrieval , nuclear medicine , artificial intelligence , engineering , pathology , external quality assessment , electrical engineering , operating system
In the US, increases in average radiation dose to the population have been recognized as being primarily due to increased use of medical radiation. The FDA, Joint Commission and State regulatory bodies have issued guidelines and rules that mandate attention be given to monitoring radiation use particularly when prescribing uses of radioactive material, computed tomography, and fluoroscopically guided procedures. One method that can provide monitoring of a patient or a group of patients is to organize a database that leverages the radiation dose information provided with DICOM imaging studies, series and images. Such a database has been created and automatically accepts a copy of image data that is retrievable from PACs, or an imaging modality. The image data are discarded but the radiation dose related information is archived in an intelligent fashion so that automatic Alerts or user initiated web reports are generated to monitor an individual, a modality, a group of patients for Quality Assurance purposes. Importantly, this endeavour has revealed two important actionable realizations; the tools needed by medical physicists include informatics based systems and secondly, a strong need exists for further standardization in the US imaging community for naming descriptions for acquisition protocols, metrics of radiation dose, operators identification.