Image Gently pediatric digital radiography summit: executive summary

Abstract

The goal of the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Radiology’s Image Gently campaign is to promote radiation protection for children undergoing imaging examinations that use ionizing radiation. The campaign creates awareness, develops educational content toward this goal, and more recently has advocated for change in equipment design to better meet the needs of pediatric patients. A previous meeting sponsored by the Alliance, the Image Gently CT Vendor Summit in 2008, urged manufacturers to standardize the CT dose display and nomenclature across vendors and promoted the adoption of a more accurate dose display or patient dose index to account for the wide range of size variability among pediatric patients. The campaign held a second meeting, the Image Gently Pediatric Digital Radiography Summit, building on the work of Drs. Charles E. Willis and Thomas L. Slovis, co-chairs of the 2004 conference, the ALARA Concept in Pediatric CR and DR: Dose Reduction in Pediatric Exams [1]. Although digital radiography (DR) technology, which encompasses both computed radiography and direct radiography, has advanced rapidly, progress has lagged in standardization, quality initiatives, and education to minimize dose while preserving image quality. To address this issue, the Image Gently Pediatric Digital Radiography Summit was held at Mallinkrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis on Feb. 4, 2010. More than 70 guests participated, including radiologists, medical physicists, radiological technologists (RTs), equipment manufacturers, educators, representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and medical professional societies. The goal of the meeting was to bring together the medical professionals who use this technology with the vendor community in order to review recent advancements in DR, discuss new standards for exposure indices, clarify the need for a national database and expand educational efforts. Plain film radiography is the most common examination in radiology, representing 74% of all radiologic examinations performed in the USA, including both adults and S. Don (*) Electronic Radiology Laboratory, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, 510 S. Kingshighway Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA e-mail: dons@mir.wustl.edu