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Radiation Safety in Nuclear Medicine Procedures

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Abstract

Since the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, radiation safety has become an important issue in nuclear medicine. Many structured guidelines or recommendations of various academic societies or international campaigns demonstrate important issues of radiation safety in nuclear medicine procedures. There are ongoing efforts to fulfill the basic principles of radiation protection in daily nuclear medicine practice. This article reviews important principles of radiation protection in nuclear medicine procedures. Useful references, important issues, future perspectives of the optimization of nuclear medicine procedures, and diagnostic reference level are also discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Nuclear Safety Research Program through the Korea Foundation of Nuclear Safety (KOFONS), granted financial resource from the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC), Republic of Korea (Grant No. 1305033).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Medical Radiation Safety Research Center, Chonnam National University Hospital, 42 Jebong-ro, Dong-gu, 501-757, Gwang-ju, Korea

    Sang-Geon Cho, Jahae Kim & Ho-Chun Song

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  1. Sang-Geon Cho
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  2. Jahae Kim
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  3. Ho-Chun Song
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Correspondence to Ho-Chun Song.

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Conflict of Interest

Sang-Geon Cho and Jahae Kim declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ho-Chun Song has received research grants from the Nuclear Safety Research Program through the Korea Radiation Safety Foundation (KORSAFe) and the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC), Republic of Korea (Grant No. 1305033).

Ethical Statement

The study was approved by an institutional review board or equivalent and has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. The institutional review board waived the need to obtain informed consent.

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Cho, SG., Kim, J. & Song, HC. Radiation Safety in Nuclear Medicine Procedures. Nucl Med Mol Imaging 51, 11–16 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13139-016-0406-0

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