Regional Projects

Description of tasks for Member States participating in regional projects on medical exposure control.

National Projects

Overview of IAEA technical cooperation national projects on medical exposure control.

Under its Technical Cooperation programme, the IAEA organizes and encourages Member States to participate in Projects on the Radiological Protection of Patients and Protection in Medical Exposure. Several Member States have national projects while others participate in regional projects under various tasks.

The overall objective of radiological protection in medical exposure is to optimize protection by reducing unnecessary exposure in diagnostic procedures, to avoid radiation injuries in interventional procedures using X rays and to avoid accidental and unnecessary exposure in radiotherapy and nuclear medicine.

Within this overall objective the regional projects have the seven following components leading to optimization of protection in medical exposure:

• Avoidance of radiation injuries in interventional procedures using X rays and limiting the probability of stochastic effects, especially in children
• Surveys of image quality and patient doses in simple radiographic examinations: establishing guidance levels and comparison with international standards
• To assist Member States in adopting better technology for general radiography
  
• Survey of mammography practice from the optimization of radiation protection viewpoint, and optimization in mammography
• Patient dose management in computed tomography with special emphasis on paediatric patients
• Providing guidelines on the release of patients after radionuclide therapy
• Preventing accidental exposures in radiotherapy

Information for potential new participants is available.

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As the projects progress, this page will contain information from Member States pertaining to:

• radiation doses to patients in different diagnostic procedures
• comparison of patients' radiation doses with guidance levels
• frequency of radiological examinations
• contribution to collective dose
• incidence of radiation injuries in high-dose procedures (if any), and
• optimization studies in radiology, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy.