Radiation protection is an important task for nuclear medicine departments
with regard to the use of radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic and therapeutic
purposes. It is important to make sure that the radiation dose to the patients as
well as to staff members is kept “as low as reasonable achievable” (ALARA). In
the last few years, the use of PET substances with higher photon energy than the
previously used radionuclides has been more and more common, and the number
of PET radionuclides is increasing. There is a sudden appearance of multimodal
PET/CT and SPECT/CT scanners. New radiopharmaceuticals for targeted radio-
nuclide therapy are introduced. Radiotracers are more and more used in surgical
practices like identification of lymph node involvement in breast cancer and
colon cancer, etc. The staff will be exposed to radiation during production,
labeling, transport, injection, and when being close to the patients. The increased
use of PET-imaging causes a need for new planning of radiation protection and
education of all categories of staff members. This was the reason for choosing
the topic of radiation protection in nuclear medicine for the second training
course organized by the MADEIRA (Minimizing Activities and Doses by
Enhancing Image quality in Radiopharmaceutical Administration) project,
cofunded by the European Commission through the EURATOM Seventh Frame-
work Programme.
Radiation Protection in Nuclear Medicine by Soren Mattsson Christoph Hoeschen