Radiation exposure monitoring: a new IHE profile

A method is described for gathering and distributing radiation exposure data from X-ray-based imaging procedures such as CT, angiography, fluoroscopy, mammography and digital X-ray systems with integrated generators. The data are recorded in a standard format as a DICOM dose object and are managed in a similar fashion to the DICOM images produced by the procedure. The Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) process for standardizing such methods is presented and applications of such data for activities, such as dose QA and national dose repositories, are also discussed.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Research and Development, Toshiba Medical Research Institute – USA, 706 N. Deerpath Drive, Vernon Hills, 60061, IL, USA

   Kevin O’Donnell

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kevin O’Donnell.

Appendix

Glossary

IHE REM profile: an integration profile that references the DICOM structured report object and formalizes the information flow from scanner to PACS to a regional or national dose registry.

DICOM dose object: an SR-based data structure containing details of the radiation exposure resulting from an imaging procedure, which can be managed using DICOM mechanisms.

DICOM SR: a template-based mechanism for storing structured data in DICOM.

DICOM: the international standard for digital imaging and communication in medicine.

Web links

IHE REM profile specification - http://www.ihe.net/Technical_Framework/index.cfm#radiology (See REM supplement)

DICOM projection X-ray template - ftp://medical.nema.org/medical/dicom/2009/09_16pu.pdf (See TID 10000 to 10005).

DICOM X-ray radiation dose SR object - ftp://medical.nema.org/medical/dicom/2009/09_03pu3.pdf (See A.35.8).

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise – http://www.ihe.net

Catalog of IHE profiles - http://wiki.ihe.net/index.php?title=Profiles

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