Studies on optimization of radiation protection for patients in diagnostic radiology

Abstract

For the exposure of patients in diagnostic radiology, individual dose limit does not apply, but optimization of radiological protection may play a major role. This project has been carried out with the purpose of improving the protection of patients in medical diagnostic radiology in China utilizing the principles of optimization. Taking Sichuan, Shandong and Beijing as surveyed areas, we investigated the present situation of the protection of patients. In the survey, the patient doses were classified into practical dose, justified dose and optimized dose to evaluate the influences of managerial and equipment factors separately. The results show that there are some urgent protection problems in X-ray pro­ tection to be solved in the surveyed regions. This paper, however, points out that the prospects of reducing patient doses are encouraging provided that appropriate measures are adopted. For instance, taking proper managerial mea­ sures without radical change of existing equipments may reduce patient doses in chest fluoroscopy and radiography by 40% and 18% respectively ; refitting some equipment may reduce the doses by 82.4% in chest fluoroscospy, 66% in chest radiography, and 80% in barium meal examination of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Using chest radiography instead of fluoroscopy supplemented by other protection measures may reduce the doses by 91.7%. Optimization analysis shows that adoption of the above measures conforms to the principle of optimi­ zation of radiation protection.