Abstract
BackgroundEffective dose represents the potential risk to a population of stochastic effects of ionizing radiation (mainly lethal cancer). In recent years, there have been a number of revisions and updates influencing the way to estimate the effective dose. The aim of this work was to recalculate the effective dose values for the 338 different radiopharmaceuticals previously published by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP).MethodThe new estimations are based on information on the cumulated activities per unit administered activity in various organs and tissues and for the various radiopharmaceuticals obtained from the ICRP publications 53, 80 and 106. The effective dose for adults was calculated using the new ICRP/International Commission on Radiation Units (ICRU) reference voxel phantoms and decay data from the ICRP publication 107. The ICRP human alimentary tract model has also been applied at the recalculations. The effective dose was calculated using the new tissue weighting factors from ICRP publications 103 and the prior factors from ICRP publication 60. The results of the new calculations were compared with the effective dose values published by the ICRP, which were generated with the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) adult phantom and the tissue weighting factors from ICRP publication 60.ResultsFor 79% of the radiopharmaceuticals, the new calculations gave a lower effective dose per unit administered activity than earlier estimated. As a mean for all radiopharmaceuticals, the effective dose was 25% lower. The use of the new adult computational voxel phantoms has a larger impact on the change of effective doses than the change to new tissue weighting factors.ConclusionThe use of the new computational voxel phantoms and the new weighting factors has generated new effective dose estimations. These are supposed to result in more realistic estimations of the radiation risk to a population undergoing nuclear medicine investigations than hitherto available values.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2197-7364-1-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Effective dose represents the potential risk to a population of stochastic effects of ionizing radiation
The use of the new adult computational voxel phantoms has a larger impact on the change of effective doses than the change to new tissue weighting factors
The absorbed doses to organs and tissues and the effective dose per unit administered activity for radiopharmaceuticals found in the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) publications 53, 80 and 106, are all calculated based on biokinetic data from these publications and using the mathematical Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) phantoms from Cristy and Eckerman [5]
Summary
Effective dose represents the potential risk to a population of stochastic effects of ionizing radiation (mainly lethal cancer). The sum of the radiation-risk weighted equivalent dose to organs and tissues in the human body (the effective dose) represents the potential risk from stochastic effects (mainly lethal cancer) of radiation. It makes it possible to compare various procedures involving ionizing radiation for radiation protection purposes. The adult male and adult female ICRP/International Commission on Radiation Units (ICRU) computational voxel phantoms were in 2007 approved by ICRP and adopted by ICRU in 2008 as reference phantoms for dosimetric calculations [6] These phantoms were constructed by adjusting the voxel phantoms Golem [7] and Laura [8] to the organ masses given in the ICRP publication 89 [9]. Unlike for the previous phantoms, specific-absorbed fractions (SAF values) for electrons are simulated using Monte Carlo methods and published by Zankl et al [10]
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