ARPANSA - Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency

Medical Exposure

While the radiation risk to the individual from a radiology procedure is very small, the consequent population risk from the steadily inreasing number of radiology procedures is not negligible. ARPANSA offers a range of diagnostic imaging dose assessments and investigations to support the dose minimisation of the Australian public.

ARPANSA can provide detailed analysis and dose calculations for many applications of ionising radiation in medicine:

• medical radiation doses and risk
• medical and non-medical x-ray equipment safety and efficacy
• measurements of the attenuation properties of shielding materials (e.g. lead loaded plastic and glass sheeting, protective aprons, gloves and lead glasses) to Australian Standards requirements
• dose evaluation/reconstructions and risk evaluation for patients undergoing diagnostic radiological examinations. Typical examples are for examinations performed on the pregnant patient and or where repeated or large dose procedures are being proposed, particularly on children
• limited Thermoluminescence Dosimeter service for use in investigations of medical doses
• advice on shielding and operator exposure
• Monte Carlo calculations to evaluate x-ray propagation and doses relevant to diagnostic radiology (e.g. Patient and operator doses, detector responses, shielding evaluations etc.)
• miscellaneous x-ray inspections (e.g. detection of radio-opaque markers in surgical swabs, discrimination of illegally imported subsances etc).

 

 

 

 

 

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