Design and Implementation of an Institution-Wide Patient-Specific Radiation Dose Monitoring Program for Computed Tomography, Digital Radiography, and Nuclear Medicine

Recently, there has been renewed interest in decreasing radiation dose to patients from diagnostic imaging procedures. So far, efforts to decrease radiation dose have focused on the amount of radiation delivered from typical techniques and fail to capture the variation in radiation dose between patients. Despite the feasibility of estimating patient-specific radiation doses and the potential for this practice to aid in protocol optimization, it is not currently standard procedure for hospitals to monitor radiation dose for all patients. To address this shortcoming, we have developed an institution-wide patient-specific radiation dose monitoring program for computed tomography, digital radiography, and nuclear medicine.