Radiation Exposure in Routine Practice with PET/CT and Automatic Infusion System - Practical experience report

Abstract

Specially when handling higher energy radioactive sources, such as F-18, the principle that radiation exposure is to be kept as low as possible must be considered. In the first two months of operation of our PET/CT scanner we were performing measurements of whole-body dose received at different steps of PET diagnostic procedure. We found doses received by radiopharmacist were 0.6 ± 0.7 μSv per day and by physician 1.2 ± 0.4 μSv per patient; both are reduced due to use of automatic F18-FDG infusion system. Doses received by technologist were 1.3 ± 0.9 μSv due to morning QC and 2.5 ± 2.1 μSv was cumulative dose per patient imaging. Estimation on the basis of measurements shows yearly doses would remain well bellow legal limits but large standard deviation implies reduction of doses with routine practice is still possible.