Dosimetry for the study of medical radiation workers with a focus on the mean absorbed dose to the lung, brain and other organs.

Background: The reconstruction of lifetime radiation doses for medical workers presents special challenges not commonly encountered for the other worker cohorts comprising the Million Worker Study.

Methods: The selection of approximately 175,000 medical radiation workers relies on using estimates of lifetime and annual personal monitoring results collected since 1977. Approaches have been created to adjust the monitoring results so that mean organ absorbed doses can be estimated.

Radiation dose reduction at a price: the effectiveness of a male gonadal shield during helical CT scans.

Background: It is estimated that 60 million computed tomography (CT) scans were performed during 2006, with approximately 11% of those performed on children age 0-15 years. Various types of gonadal shielding have been evaluated for reducing exposure to the gonads. The purpose of this study was to quantify the radiation dose reduction to the gonads and its effect on image quality when a wrap-around male pediatric gonad shield was used during CT scanning.

Radiation exposure of computed tomography and direct intracoronary angiography: risk has its reward.

A hallmark of noninvasive testing has been the identification of patients with coronary artery disease. Now, with multislice computed tomography (MSCT), information about coronary anatomy can be obtained without the need for catheterization. A major concern with the application of MSCT coronary angiography is the radiation exposure to the patient.