This document reviews doses and risks from natural background radiation as well as medical sources of radiation including diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology/cardiology, and nuclear medicine. It provides details on dose levels from various natural sources and medical procedures. The highest medical doses come from interventional fluoroscopy which can exceed skin dose limits and increase risks. Nuclear medicine procedures generally have lower doses than interventional methods but higher than diagnostic radiology. Risks to both patients and medical staff are discussed.

1. Doses and Risks in Diagnostic
Radiology, Interventional
Radiology and Cardiology, and
Nuclear Medicine
By
Dr. Ayush Garg

2. The purpose of this chapter is to review the doses involved and to
estimate the associated risks in radiology, cardiology, and nuclear
medicine.

3. DOSES FROM NATURAL BACKGROUND
RADIATION
• Natural sources of radiation include
• Cosmic rays from outer space and
from the sun,
• Terrestrial radiation from natural
radioactive materials in the ground,
and radiation from radionuclides
• naturally present in the body, ingested
from food, or inhaled.

4. • Enhanced natural sources are sources that are natural in origin but to
which exposure is increased because of human activity.
• Examples include air travel at high altitude, which increases cosmic
ray levels, and movement of radionuclides on the ground in
phosphate mining.
• Indoor radon exposure might be considered
in some instances an enhanced natural
source, in as much as it is not natural to
live in an insulated house.

5. • Cosmic Radiation
• Cosmic rays are made up of radiations originating from outside the
solar system and from charged particles (largely protons) emanating
from the surface of the sun.
• Cosmic ray intensity is least in equatorial regions and rises toward the
poles.
• There is an even larger variation in cosmic ray intensity with altitude,
because at high elevations above sea level, there is less atmosphere
to absorb the cosmic rays, so their intensity is greater

6. Natural Radioactivity in the Earth’s Crust
• Naturally occurring radioactive materials are widely distributed
throughout the earth’s crust, and humans are exposed to the y-rays
from them like Thorium & Uranium in U.S.

7. Internal Exposure
• Small traces of radioactive materials are normally present in the
human body, ingested from the tiny quantities present in food or
inhaled as airborne particles.
• Radioactive thorium, radium, and lead can be detected in most
persons, but the amounts are small and variable, and the figure
usually quoted for the average dose rate resulting from these
deposits is less than 10 Sv per year.
• Only radioactive potassium-40 makes an appreciable contribution to
human exposure from ingestion. The dose rate is about 0.2 mSv per
year, which cannot be ignored as a source of mutations in humans.

8. • The biggest source of natural background radiation is radon gas,
which seeps into the basements of houses from rocks underground.
• Radon, is a decay product in the uranium series, a noble gas.
• Radon progeny emit α-particles that, it is believed, are responsible for
lung cancer.

9. Areas of High Natural Background
• The highest natural background radiation is in Kerala, where more
than 100,000 people receive an average annual dose of about 13 mSv,
reaching a high in certain locations on the coast of 70 mSv.
• It is because of radioactivity in rocks, soil, or in building materials
from which houses are made.

10. COMPARISON OF RADIATION DOSES FROM
NATURAL SOURCES AND HUMAN ACTIVITIES
• In addition to natural background
radiation, the human population is
exposed to various sources of
radiation resulting from human
activities.

12. DIAGNOSTIC RADIOLOGY

13. • The radiation doses involved in radiology other than interventional
procedures are seldom sufficiently large to result in deterministic
effects.
• By definition, a deterministic effect has a practical threshold in dose,
the severity of the effect increases with dose, and it results from
damage to many cells. One exception is inadvertent exposure of the
developing embryo or fetus, with a possible consequence of reduced
head diameter (microcephaly) and mental retardation.
• The threshold for radiation-induced mental retardation is about 0.3
Gy (International Commission on Radiological Protection [ICRP],
2006), so few procedures are likely to cause this effect.

14. • The potential deleterious consequences of diagnostic radiology
involve stochastic effects, that is, carcinogenesis and heritable effects.
• The characteristic of stochastic effects is that there is no threshold in
dose; that is, there is no dose below which the effect does not occur,
and the probability of carcinogenesis or heritable effects increases
with dose.
• A stochastic effect may result from irradiation of one or a few cells,
and the severity of the response is not dose related.
• As a consequence, absorbed dose to a limited portion of a person’s
body does not provide by itself the overall perspective on risk
associated with a given procedure.

15. • Effective dose is a more relevant quantity; it takes into account the
tissues and organs irradiated, as well as the dose involved.
• It is defined as the sum of the equivalent doses to each tissue and
organ exposed multiplied by the appropriate tissue weighting factors
(WT).
• The unit of absorbed dose is the gray, whereas the unit of effective
dose is the sievert.

16. Adult Effective Doses for Various Diagnostic Radiology Procedures

17. Adult Effective Doses for Various CT Procedures

18. • The overall population impact of diagnostic radiology can be assessed
in terms of the collective effective dose, the product of effective dose
and the number of persons exposed.
• In this case, the unit is the person-sievert.
• This quantity is a surrogate for “harm” resulting from a given event
involving radiation exposure.
• For example, the collective effective dose from the Chernobyl
accident multiplied by the risk coefficient (5% per sievert for fatal
cancer) gives an estimate of the number of cancer cases resulting
from the accident, and is therefore a measure of the harm done.

19. • Some of the largest doses in diagnostic radiology are associated with
fluoroscopy. In this case, the dose rate is greatest at the skin, where
the x-ray beam first enters the patient.
• The entrance exposure limit for standard operation of a fluoroscope is
10 R per minute.
• A typical fluoroscopic entrance exposure rate for a medium-built
person is approximately 3 R per minute (corresponding to an
absorbed dose rate of about 30 mGy per minute).
• Much higher dose rates may be encountered during recorded
interventional and cardiac catheterization studies

20. INTERVENTIONAL RADIOLOGY AND
CARDIOLOGY
• Interventional fluoroscopy refers to any procedure in which the use or
application of a medical device is fluoroscopally guided in the body and
includes procedures that may be for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.
• It is one of the fastest growing areas of medical radiation.
• These procedures include
• Cardiac radiofrequency ablation,
• Coronary artery angioplasty and stent placement,
• Neuroembolization,
• Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) placement.
• Such procedures tend to be lengthy and involve fluoroscopy of a single area
of the anatomy for a prolonged period—frequently for longer than 30
minutes and occasionally for over an hour.

21. Adult Effective Doses for Various Interventional Radiology Procedures

22. Patient Doses and Effective Doses
• Radiation doses received by patients from interventional radiology
and cardiology are much higher than from general diagnostic
radiology; so much so that there is a risk of deterministic effects, such
as early or late skin damage.
• During these procedures, typical fluoroscopic absorbed dose rates to
the skin can range from 20 to more than 50 mGy per minute.

23. Potential Effects of Fluoroscopic Exposures on
the Reaction of the Skin

24. Dose to Personnel
• Physicians involved in cardiology, angiography, and fluoroscopically
guided interventional work routinely receive radiation doses higher
than any other staff in a medical facility and comparable to doses
received in the nuclear industry.
• Frequently, doses received by interventional radiologists are close to
the annual dose limits, and there is also evidence that ocular
cataracts are not uncommon. This is principally because of prolonged
fluoroscopy.

25. NUCLEAR MEDICINE
• Nuclear medicine is the medical specialty in which unsealed
radionuclides, chemically manipulated to form radiopharmaceuticals,
are used for diagnosis and therapy.
• Radiopharmaceuticals localize in various target tissues and organs,
and although nuclear medicine images have less spatial and anatomic
resolution than do radiographic or magnetic resonance images, they
are better able to display physiology and metabolism.

26. Historical Perspective
• The first person to suggest using
radioactive isotopes to label compounds
in biology and medicine was the
Hungarian chemist Georg von Hevesy,
whose work, beginning before World
War II, earned him a Nobel Prize in 1943.

27. • The cyclotron was invented and developed by Ernest Lawrence in the
1930s, also leading to a Nobel Prize, and devices of this type have
been used to produce short-lived isotopes and positron emitters.

28. Effective Doses for Adults from Various Nuclear Medicine Examinations

29. Principles in Nuclear Medicine
• They are produced artificially, using four principal routes of manufacture:
• (1) cyclotron bombardment (producing, for example, gallium-67, indium-
111, thalium-201, cobalt-57, iodine-123, carbon-11, oxygen-15, nitrogen-
13, and fluorine-18),
• (2) reactor irradiation (e.g., chromium-51, selenium-75, iron-59, cobalt-58,
iodine-125, and iodine-131),
• (3) fission products (e.g., iodine-131, xenon-133, and strontium-90),
• (4) generators that provide secondary decay products from longer lived
parent radionuclides. The most common example is the column generator
incorporating molybdenum-99 for the provision of technetium-99m.

30. • Most technetium-99m generators use fission-produced molybdenum-
99, although techniques of neutron irradiation could provide a viable
alternative source of this important parent radionuclide.
• Other generators include those incorporating tin-113 (for the
provision of indium-113m), rubidium-81 (for krypton-81m), and
germanium-68 (for gallium-68).

31. • The use of radiopharmaceuticals for diagnosis or therapy is based on
the accumulation or concentration of the isotope in the organ of
interest, referred to as the target organ.
• A radiopharmaceutical may have an affinity for a certain organ that is
not necessarily the organ of interest, in which case this organ is
termed a critical organ.
• Often the dose to a critical organ limits the amount of radioisotope
that may be administered. The risk to which the patient is subjected is
clearly a function of the doses received in all organs and is expressed
in terms of the effective dose.

32. • In addition to conventional planar imaging, two basic modalities have
evolved.
• First, there is single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).
• This uses conventional y-emitting radiopharmaceuticals and is often
performed in combination with planar imaging.
• The second modality is the more specialized technique of PET. This is
based on the simultaneous detection of the pairs of photons (511
keV) arising from positron annihilation and mostly uses the short-
lived biologically active radionuclides oxygen-15, carbon-11, fluorine-
18, and nitrogen-13.

33. Positron Emission Tomography
• The important and unique feature of PET studies is that they
document physiologic abnormalities, or changes in metabolism,
rather than simply alterations in anatomy.
• The principle of PET imaging is that the scanner locates the tracer by
detecting the collinear pairs of 0.511-MeV photons emitted if a
positron annihilates after uniting with an electron.

34. • Examples of radionuclides used for PET imaging include oxygen-15,
carbon-11, and fluorine-18; these radionuclides have short half-lives
of 2, 20, and 110 minutes, respectively
• The most commonly administered positron emitting radionuclide is
fluorine-18, which is used for the production of [18F]-2-deoxy-2-
fluoro-D-glucose, usually referred to as FDG.
• [18F]-FDG has also found a use in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer
disease through the direct visualization of amyloid plaques in the
brain.

35. • Other metabolic radiopharmaceuticals are rapidly finding a place in
clinical practice—for example, [18F]- fluorothymidine (FLT) to map
areas of rapid cell proliferation within tumors, or compounds such as
[18F]-fluoromisonidazole(FMISO), [18F]- fluoroazomycin-arabinoside
(FAZA), or 64-Cudiacetyl- bis(N4-methylthiosemicarbazone) (64- Cu-
ATSM) to highlight areas in tumors that are hypoxic.

36. The Therapeutic Use of Radionuclides
• The most common form of nuclear medicine therapy is the use of radioactive
iodine-131 for the treatment of hyperthyroidism.
• It involves an absorbed dose to the thyroid gland that varies with the person and
is very nonuniform within the tissue itself.
• In addition, there is a total body dose of typically 70 to 150 mGy, which results
from the isotope circulating in the blood.
• Because radiation is known to be a potent carcinogen, the risk of leukemia or of
thyroid cancer following iodine-131 therapy has been appreciated from the
outset.
• Pregnancy is a contraindication to the treatment of hyperthyroidism with iodine-
131.
• Treatment of fertile women should be preceded by the taking of a careful history
and a pregnancy test. Treatment should be delayed, if possible, to eliminate the
potential effects during pregnancy.

37. • The second most common form of therapy with unsealed
radionuclides is the treatment of thyroid cancer.
• Following complete surgical removal of the cancer and the thyroid
gland, radioiodine may be given to destroy any residual iodine-
accumulating cancer cells that had spread to lymph nodes, lungs, or
bone.
• Such treatments involve large doses of iodine-131 that may result in a
total body dose of 0.5 to 1.0 Gy, which is sufficient to cause severe
depression of the bone marrow.

38. The therapy of bone metastases
• Several cancers, including prostate and breast, have a predilection for
diffuse spread throughout the skeleton. There are several
radiopharmaceuticals (such as strontium-89 chloride) that will localize
in the metastatic lesions to provide palliation (but not cure).

39. Polycythemia vera
• It is a relatively rare disease that is characterized by overproduction of
red and white blood cells by the bone marrow.
• Phosphate-32 is given intravenously, which localizes in the bone so
that the y-rays emitted result in a mild bone marrow suppression and
reduction in the production of many blood elements.

40. Radioimmunotherapy
• It uses radiolabeled antibodies directed against specific antigens.
These agents can be used for the treatment of chemotherapy-
resistant lymphomas.
• The antibodies are most commonly labeled with iodine-131 or
yttrium-90 and injected intravenously in relatively large activities.

41. MEDICAL IRRADIATION OF CHILDREN AND
PREGNANT WOMEN
Irradiation of Children
• The hazards associated with medical radiation in children are basically
the same as in adults— namely, cancer and heritable effects.
• Concern for possible heritable effects induced by radiation is likewise
greater in children, because they have their entire reproductive lives
ahead of them.
• The general principle is that radiation exposures should be kept at the
lowest practical level and in each case, the expected benefit should
exceed the risk clearly.

42. Irradiation of Pregnant Women
• The risks involved in exposure to radiation of the embryo or
fetus are summarized as follows:
• 1. For the first 10 days following conception (i.e., during preimplantation), the
most significant effect of radiation may be to kill the embryo, leading to
resorption.
• 2. Between 10 days and 8 weeks postconception (i.e., during organogenesis), the
risks include congenital malformations and small head size, as well as
carcinogenesis.
• 3. Between 8 and 15 weeks, and to a lesser extent 15 to 25 weeks, the risks
include mental retardation, as well as small head size and carcinogenesis.
• 4. Beyond 25 weeks, the only risk of externally delivered diagnostic radiation is
carcinogenesis, which is much reduced, compared with the risk during the first
trimester.

43. • Radiation-induced carcinogenesis is considered a stochastic effect;
that is, there is no threshold and the risk increases with dose.
• The other serious effects, such as mental retardation and congenital
malformations, are considered deterministic; that is, there is a dose
threshold of about 0.3 Gy.
• If a woman requires an emergency radiologic examination, however,
there should be no hesitation to do the study.
• The health of the woman is of primary importance, and if serious
injury or illness is suspected, this takes priority in determining the
need for a study.

44. SUMMARY

45. THANK YOU