Radiation protection

in the cath lab and interventional radiology:

practical hints and tricks
PROF. HILDE BOSMANS
MEDICAL PHYSICS EXPERT IN RADIOLOGY
Acknowledgement
My colleagues: Prof. Nick Marshall, Michiel Dehairs, the Leuven medical physics team in radiology
& the medical teams in interventional radiology & cardiology

The P3 STROKE project partners, coordinator M. Leghissa

The EUTEMPE-net consortium: learn new competences in medical physics, www.eutempe-net.eu

Many international colleagues and friends (S. Balter, M. Rehani, W. Pavlicek, A. Trianni, the DIMONDIII team)
The IAEA, and their encouragements to lecture in this webinar. Thank you, Jenia Vassileva.
Conflict of interest
Hilde Bosmans is co-founder and board member of QAELUM NV.
This company provides software packages for dose and quality monitoring, including skin dose
mapping
Overview
▪ The basics: justification, optimization & dose limits
▪ Get motivated for the lecture
▪ Radiation protection: time, distance, shielding
▪ Practical hints and tricks
▪ A case study: a new combined angio – MR system and impact on radiation protection?
Basic principles of radiation protection

Justification

Optimization Dose limits

Assure the right test is done on the The patient shouldn’t receive dose
right patient for the right reason Justification without a potential benefit

Patient outcome Dose to patient and personnel

 Optimization Lesson 1

The medical team is responsible to ensure

the radiological procedure provides quality images,
adequate for diagnosis and treatment,
while keeping the radiation dose
As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA)
 Dose limits

Personnel Public Patients

Eye lens Eye lens

20 mSv/year 15 mSv/year

Whole Body Whole Body

20 mSv/year 1 mSv/year

Skin of the whole body Skin of the whole body

500 mSv/year 50 mSv/year

Extremities
500 mSv/year Look at DRLs and
trigger levels
(More on this later)
 Ionizing radiation

Ionizing radiation is radiation that carries

enough energy to remove an electron
from an atom or molecule

Exposure to ionizing radiation causes damage to living tissue

and can results in cell damage and potentially cancer and death
Radiation risks
• Two types

• The stochastic effect is the non-threshold biologic effect of radiation that occurs by chance to a
population of persons whose probability is proportional to the dose and whose severity is independent
of the dose. For example: cancer development, genetic effects

• The deterministic effect is a dose-dependent direct health effect of radiation with dose threshold. For
example: Skin necrosis

•This does not only apply to patients but also to the medical team
Radiation risks (Patients)
• Skin burn is a well-documented radiation induced effect
in the Cath Lab

•But there are several other important

deterministic effects than can occur:
• Lens opacities and cataract
• Affected fertility
• Reduced count in White Blood Cells
 Radiation risks (Patients)
• Increased risk of cancer Typical Patient effective doses for common interventional cardiac procedures
•Risk scales with the effective dose,

Brilakis ES, Banerjee S, Karmpaliotis D, et al. Procedural outcomes of chronic total occlusion percutaneous coronary intervention: a report from the NCDR (National Cardiovascular Data Registry). JACC Cardiovasc Interv 2015;8:245-53.
Andreou K, Pantos I, Tzanalaridou E, Efstathopoulos E, Katritsis D. Patient radiation exposure and influencing factors at interventional cardiology procedures. Phys Med2016;32(Suppl 3):234.
García-García HM, van Mieghem CA, Gonzalo N, et al. Computed tomography in total coronary occlusions (CTTO registry): radiation exposure and predictors of successful percutaneous intervention. EuroIntervention 2009;4:607-16.
Radiation risks (medical team)
• Interventional Cardiologists experience the highest amount of radiation exposure of any
medical professional
• An increase in the potential complexity of the interventional procedures has again increased the
concern to reduce the radiation dose to the personnel
• Procedures like chronic total occlusions (CTO’s), peripheral artery disease (PAD), left atrial appendage
occlusion (LAA) and trans catheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) are much longer and complicated
than the common percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI’s)

• ‘Concerns regarding (left-sided) brain cancer developing

in physicians performing interventional procedures’ (Am J Cardiol. 2013 May)
• ‘A high prevalence of lens changes likely induced by radiation exposure…’
(J Vasc Interv Radiol. 2013 Feb;24(2):197-204)
•Thyroid disease and neuro degenerative disease ?
 Dose Quantities (‘vocabulary’)
1. Fluoroscopic Time (min) = the time during a procedure that fluoroscopy is used but does not include
(cine) acquisition imaging. Therefore, on itself, it tends to underestimate the total radiation dose
received.
2. Cumulative Air Kerma (Gy) = a measure of X-ray energy delivered to air at the interventional reference
point (15 cm from the isocenter in the direction of the focal spot). This measurement has been closely
associated with deterministic skin effects.
(not a true peak skin dose)
3. Dose-Area Product (Gy.cm2) = the cumulative product of the air kerma and the X-ray field area. This
monitors the patient dose burden and is a good indicator of stochastic effects.
Dose Quantities

Copyright © 2000, International Commission on Radiological Protection.

Radiation Sources
• For patients: radiation dose comes from the X-ray tube
• For the medical personnel: radiation dose comes from the Patient!
• Lowering the dose to the patient means lowering the dose to the staff
How to achieve Radiation Protection
The three basic principles of protecting yourself and others from radiation are:

Time Distance Shielding

 dose

Time
• total exposure time should be ALARA  less exposure, less dose
• Fluoroscopy time is often used as an indication of patient dose, but the correlation is very poor
 fluoroscopy time should not be used as the only dose indicator

• Optimizing ‘time’ in an interventional procedure considers:

• Number of images
• Number of x-ray pulses per image
• Number of retakes
• Number of (ciné) runs and their duration
(ciné dose is much higher than fluoro dose)
• Frame rate
(determine the minimum number of frames per second needed)
Time
is also the ‘total X-ray Energy per pulse’:
• System dose settings (high versus low dose level)
• Angulation of the beam (amount of tissue traversed)
• Investigation of new options of a system
• The correct use of filtration, grid, magnification views & collimation
• Working with specified (patient size optimized?) procedures
• Post processing
Time
is also ‘Human Efficiency’:
•Technical and practical knowledge on proper operation of a system and dealing with error
messages
•Training of the personnel (example: find and apply procedure specific programs)
•Fluoroscopy only to observe objects or structures in motion.
•Review the last-image-hold for study, consultation, or education (as opposed to additional
fluoroscopic exposure)
•The use of dose reducing actions
•Team work, team spirit
Distance
•Know when the beam is on
•Check where the tube is… check where the x-rays enter the patient and will be scattered
•The patient is the source of radiation. KEEP distance!
•Put the tube under the table
•Operators should avoid a
place next to the tube
•Step back from the patient,
preferably behind shielding
•Don’t slouch over the patient, but
stand upright
Distance
•Keep your hands out of the radiation field
•Put the detector as close as possible to the patient
•If not needed in the room, leave the room. Try not to be standing next to the patient
•Use power injectors for contrast material injections when feasible
•Ergonomics in the room
•Place the monitors away from the x-ray source
•Analysis of danger
Shielding

Lead shielding is critical for the protection of the medical personnel

• Lead apron, thyroid shield, eyewear (gloves, cap, gonad shield)
• Ceiling mounted lead shield
• Table side shields
• Protective garments stop approximately 95% of scatter radiation
• Check your aprons for cracks regularly
Not even the best Pb is going to free you from needing to be careful with radiation
Responsibility of the owner of the facility or the MD to create a radiation awareness culture
Shielding
• Wearing this heavy lead apron has proven to lead to an increase in orthopedic back pain issues
among interventionalists, “the interventionalist disc disease”

• A Possible solution to this problem is the:

Zero-Gravity Radiation Protection System

It uses a ceiling suspended gantry system to support a walk-

in, lead-lined suit that eliminates the weight of lead aprons
being placed on the body of the interventionalist. The gantry
allows for smooth movement along the X, Y, Z axis.
Some practical tips
Some practical tips
Patient Position
• The patient should be placed away from the
radiation source to lower the skin dose CORRECT TECHNIQUE INCORRECT TECHNIQUE
Low exposure and good image quality High exposure and blurred image

• The image detector should be placed close

to the patient to lower the necessary dose
 less geometric blurring

•The tube should always be positioned

under the table (under couch configuration)
 less scatter towards the personnel’s eyes
•Keep the patient’s extremities out of the beam
Tube Angulation
• The use of steep angulations should be minimized and used only if necessary
• Each 3 cm additional tissue doubles the dose to the patient (factor of ~10 each 10 cm)

Dose rate: ~250 mGy/min

Dose rate: 20-40 mGy/min

X-rays need to penetrate more tissue and

the source to skin distance is reduced
Tube Angulation
• Using small angulations actually has the potential to reduce the peak skin dose of the patient
• Moving the X-ray beam to different areas of the
patient’s body during the procedures lowers the
peak skin dose
• Good practice: every 30 minutes, change the
beam angle

Figure 1 from: Pasciak AS, Bourgeois AC, Jones AK

C-arm rotation as a method for reducing peak skin dose in interventional cardiology, Open Heart 2014
Magnification
• Magnification will increase the patient dose (beam energy is condensed to a smaller
area)

• Use the largest Field of view (FOV) possible

for the procedure being performed.
The difference in skin dose between
the larger FOVs and the smallest
is a factor of ~4

•In modern systems, there is a "Live Zoom"

feature without additional radiation and
without significant degradation
of the image
Collimation
A ‘collimator’ is an adjustable lead shutter located at the exit of the X-ray source that can be
closed down to limit the irradiated area
• Appropriate collimation should be used for the imaging task
 this lowers both the patient’s dose and the staff’s
• Modern systems should be equipped
with virtual collimation
System Settings
• It is important to get to know your system and its options
• Make sure to use the lowest dose setting when possible
• Talk with the manufacturer/technician to set the initial dose setting to ‘low dose’
 increase when necessary instead of lowering when possible (less chance to forget)
• Use the proper frame rate, lower where possible
• Use the proper acquisition program
• Make sure when buying a new system that it has proper filtration
 Cu filters out the low energy X-rays, lowering skin dose
Select the proper program Select the proper Dose level Select the proper Frame rate
Summary
 Dose Monitoring
• Recommendations stated in NCRP 168:

Framerate
Dose mode
Fluoro time

DAP
Cumulative Ka
Dose Monitoring Pyramid
• Monitoring DAP and Ka,r is only scraping the bottom of the possible options:

While the medical team addresses the patients,

the medical physicist could climb the pyramid!

Copied from AAPM TG246

Dose Monitoring with Skin Dose Mapping
• Skin dose mapping used to be extremely labour intensive and not feasible on a per patient
basis. Tools are now available to monitor patient dose online or quickly after the procedure
• These tools allow the radiologists and medical physicists to improve patient follow up
• Dose management for patients with repeated exposures is of great importance for radiation
protection purposes  help with risk analysis and locating irradiated skin
• Peak skin dose mapping predicts possible deterministic effects
• Skin Dose Mapping (real-time or post processed) is of great importance to trigger optimization
actions. It may show the need !
Dose Monitoring
Check the patient dose information in more detail

Courtesy TQM by Qaelum NV

Analyze trends

Check DRLs per system and compare with others

Courtesy TQM by Qaelum NV

Skin Dose Mapping

Courtesy TQM by Qaelum NV Courtesy DTS by Canon Medical systems

Trigger levels and patient follow up
• Trigger levels should be set up in order to prevent skin damage to the patient
 a typical threshold value of 2-3 Gy (skin dose) can be found in literature

Struelens L, Phys Med. 2014 Dec;30(8):934-40

Source NCRP 2010
Patient Follow Up
• Recommendations stated in NCRP 168:

•Steve Balter: “with obese patients it is good clinical practice

that threshold values for deterministic effects are
sometimes exceeded.
It means obese patients are treated properly.
Skin injuries should however never be a post procedural surprise”
Diagnostic Reference Levels
• A DRL is a tool used to aid in optimization of protection in the medical exposure of patients for
diagnostic and interventional procedures
• Reference levels are typically set at the 75th (and 25th) percentile of the median dose
distribution from a survey, conducted across a broad user base using a specified dose
measurement protocol
• Diagnostic reference levels are supplements to professional judgment and do not provide a
dividing line between good and bad medicine. They apply only to medical exposure not public or
occupational  Not a dose limit!
• They represent the dose level at which an investigation of the appropriateness of the dose
should be initiated  Too high or too low
• Dose surveys should be repeated periodically to establish new reference levels
• The ICRP 135 contains many recommendations on establishing effective DRL protocols
Personal Dosimetry
• Patients have their DAP value, you have your dosimeter! The high occupational exposures in interventional
radiology require the use of robust and adequate monitoring arrangements for staff
• Personal dosimeters are typically thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs)
• It is recommended (sometimes obliged) to wear two dosimeters:
1. Under-apron worn at breast or waist level  gives an estimate of effective dose and confirms the
lead apron is being worn (properly)
2. Over-apron worn at the collar level  provides an estimate of the eye lens dose

• The monitoring period should be one month, and should not exceed three months

Over-apron
Under-apron
Real Time Personal Dosimetry
•Real time radiation dose monitoring in the Cath lab enables staff to see their level of exposure
any time and can alert them when their levels are spiking
• Can still be useful even when not used in daily practice:
•Active, electronic personal dosimeters have proven useful for optimization monitoring, for
educational purposes, for special studies of dose by procedure, and for specific aspects of a
procedure
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance
• World Health Organization (1982):
“ Quality Assurance is an organized effort by the staff operating a facility, to ensure that the
diagnostic images produced by the facility are of sufficient high quality so that they consistently
provide adequate diagnostic information at the lowest possible cost and with the least possible
exposure of the patient to radiation. “
• Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom:
“ Quality Assurance (QA) means all those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide
adequate assurance that a structure, system, component or procedure will perform satisfactorily
in compliance with agreed standards. ”

• Quality control is a part of quality assurance

Quality Assurance
Identify
Problems

Resolve Monitor
Problems Problems
Quality Assurance
• Developing a successful Quality Assurance program is an essential part of radiological
protection
• This is a significant undertaking in need of strong leadership and collaboration of staff
• Some recommendations of the ICRP 120:
✓ The two basic objectives are to evaluate patient radiation dose periodically and to monitor
occupational radiation dose for workers
✓ Training in radiological protection (both initial and retraining) should be included for all staff
involved in interventional procedures
✓ A radiologist/cardiologist should have management responsibility for the quality assurance
program aspects of radiological protection and should be assisted by a medical physicist
✓ A senior interventionalist and a medical physicist should be included in the planning for and
installation of a new interventional fluoroscopy laboratory or upgrade of existing equipment
Quality Assurance
✓ The QA program should include patient dose audits and comparison with diagnostic reference
levels
✓ Periodical evaluation of image quality and procedure protocols should be included in the QA
program
✓ The QA program should ensure the regular use of personal dosimeters and include review of all
abnormal dose values
✓ The QA program should establish a trigger level for individual clinical follow-up when there is
a risk of radiation induced skin injuries
✓ Patient dose reports should be produced at the end of procedures, archived and recorded in the
patients medical record
Future Technology
• Many solutions are being developed (or already exist) to reduce radiation exposure in the Cath
lab:
• Active dose monitoring in real time
• Real time skin dose mapping
• Zero gravity radiation protection systems
• Robotic navigation systems (operator can sit behind lead glass)
• Advanced Image processing, lowering the dose needs
• ADRC optimization
• Hybrid systems to increase work flow efficiency

•Example: Angio-MR system designed for stroke patients

Future Technology
• Angio-MR system will have complete integration of the angio detector and X-ray tube in the MRI
• No need to transport the patient between diagnosis and treatment  huge benefit in time
• More accurate information of the disease and better treatment since one can switch between MRI and Angio very
fast
• Immediate confirmation if the treatment is successful
Better patient outcome
 Future Technology & radiation protection
•Since patient is lying inside an MRI bore, there will be much less scatter radiation towards the staff
 perhaps no need of heavy lead aprons or ceiling mounted lead shields
•Using input from MRI, less fluoroscopy time needed ?
•Increased distance from the patient ?

Scatter Conventional C-arm Scatter Angio-MRI

Feet Head Head

Feet

These are vertical planes orthogonal to the table located at the physicians position
Future technology & radiation protection
Conventional Angio-MRI

3D Dose Distribution 3D Dose Distribution

(ev/g) per history (ev/g) per history

Bore exit

Patient table Patient table

Shown are horizontal planes at the height of the table Safe position for the interventionalist to stand
What is next?
Is the future bright ?

Thanks !!!!!!!