ARPANSA - Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency

Monitoring Radiation Doses From Diagnostic Radiology

ARPANSA has a responsibility to estimate the radiation doses to the Australian population from radiological procedures. Evaluation of these doses provides valuable information for the optimisation of dose management. The data also allow Australian doses to be compared with those of other countries and for the setting of national diagnostic reference levels. The latter are used as quality control benchmarks for radiological practices.

A national survey of radiation dose from general radiology has now been completed and the results were presented at the Engineering and Physical Sciences in Medicine annual meeting in Adelaide in September 2005.

Computed tomography (CT) procedures have become the dominant contributor to the radiation dose to the population from diagnostic radiology. This has come about both because of the increasing number of procedures and the increasing complexity afforded by modern technology. Radiation doses from CT were surveyed by ARPANSA in 1994 and have been updated for 2002 using the increases in number of standard procedures. In Australia the per head radiation dose from CT for 2002 was approximately 0.8 mSv, or 70% of the total estimated for all diagnostic uses of radiation. ARPANSA is planning a national survey of CT procedures and doses, which will take into account the effects of new technology and new types of procedures. Staff have completed the development of computation tools to estimate effective doses from the output of all types of CT equipment. They are now collecting data on the technical specifications and location of CT equipment. A major aim of the survey is to measure the impact of new technologies and procedures on patient doses in CT.

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