Radiation Exposure to Staff in a PET/CT Facility

Positron emission tomography (PET) has been playing key role in important clinical decision-making in many areas ever since its inception in the field of medical imaging. Most of the hospitals are enthusiastic for including PET in their imaging services because of its increasing application particularly in oncology. However, the occupational workers are apprehensive about the risk of higher radiation exposure in a PET facility. There is a need therefore to make the staff aware of the radiation doses they may likely get while working in this facility. We have estimated the radiation exposure to the physicians and technologists working in our PET/CT facility based on the dose rate measurement with calibrated survey meter and pocket dosimeter. The mean dose measured at the chest level per PET/CT procedure was 3.24 μSv and 0.62 μSv for the physicians and technologists respectively. The mean dose to the physicians per MBq of 18F-FDG injected was 8.76 nSv/MBq and 27.68 nSv/MBq at the chest and wrist levels respectively.