Radiation dose of nuclear medicine technicians performing PET/MR
- 1 September 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Journal of Radiological Protection
- Vol. 40 (3), 861-866
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6498/aba082
Abstract
Since october 2015, PET/MR has been used extensively for clinical routine in the nuclear medicine department of the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital (Paris, France) with a throughput of 11 to 15 patients each day. While many studies have been conducted to investigate dose reduction strategies to patients with hybrid PET/MR devices, no study has focused on staff radiation safety. Knowing that patient positioning within the scanner takes longer in PET/MR than in PET/CT because of the placement of several local MR receive coils, a retrospective study was carried out to measure the radiation doses to nuclear medicine technologists from the patient. The analysis was conducted during one year on 1332 clinical PET/MR studies performed with the Signa PET/MR system (General Electric Healthcare) in our department. The whole-body exposure of the technologist staff was on average for all PET/MR exams10.3 +/- 4 nSv per injected MBq of 18 F. When performing brain PET/MR exams only, the whole-body exposure was on average 8.7 +/- 2 nSv per injected MBq of 18 F. Brain PET/MR provides lower radiation dose than whole-body examinations for cancer screening due to a lower injected activity (2 vs. 3 MBq kg(-1)) and shorter patient positioning (5 vs. 15 min). When starting PET/MR in a nuclear medicine department, an important step is to optimise patient positionning within the scanner to minimise radiation dose received by the technical staff from patients.This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- Dose Reduction in Brain [18F]FDG PET/MRI: Give It Half a ChanceMolecular Imaging & Biology, 2019
- Combined PET/MRI: Global Warming-Summary Report of the 6th International Workshop on PET/MRI, March 27-29, 2017, Tubingen, GermanyMolecular Imaging & Biology, 2018
- NEMA NU 2-2012 performance studies for the SiPM-based ToF-PET component of the GE SIGNA PET/MR systemMedical Physics, 2016
- Radiation exposure of patients and personnel from a PET/CT procedure with 18F-FDGRadiation Protection Dosimetry, 2010
- Doses to nuclear technicians in a dedicated PET/CT centre utilising 18F fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 2006
- Radiation dose rates from patients undergoing positron emission tomography: implications for technologists and waiting areasEuropean Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, 2000
- Radiation dose to technicians per nuclear medicine procedure: comparison between technetium-99m, gallium-67, and iodine-131 radiotracers and fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucoseEuropean Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, 1997