Occupational exposure in a PET/CT facility using two different automatic infusion systems.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to measure the occupational exposure using active personal dosimeters (APD) in the PET/CT department at different stages of the operation chain i.e. radiopharmaceutical arrival, activity preparation, dispensing, injection, patient positioning, discharge and compare the radiation exposure doses received using two automatic injection/infusion systems. This paper also reflects optimization processes that were performed to reduce occupational exposure. Measured APD data were analysed for medical physicists, radiology technologists and administrative staff from 2014 till 2018. For dispensing and injecting 18F-FDG, the automatic infusion/injection system IRIDE (Comecer, Italy) or the automatic fractionator ALTHEA (Comecer, Italy) with wireless injection system WIS (Comecer, Italy) were used. Radiation exposure optimization methods were applied during the data collection period (installation of the transport port, patient management, APD alarm threshold and etc.). Radiology technologists who perform injection procedures, regardless of the automatic infusion system, received the highest radiation exposure dose. The average doses to the radiology technologists per one study were 1.72±0.33 μSv and 1.16±0.11 μSv with ALTHEA/WIS and IRIDE system, respectively. The average dose for accompanying the patient to the PET/CT scanner and scan procedure was 0.52±0.07 μSv. For the medical physicists, the average dose was 0.29±0.09 µSv. The measured dose for administrative staff was 0.30±0.15 μSv. Occupational exposure can be effectively optimized by different means including staff monitoring with APD, implementation of radiation safety culture and the usage of automatic infusion systems.