Reassessment of Effective Doses for Selected Diagnostic Nuclear Medicine Procedures Using ICRP-Based Models and RADAR-2017
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48165/jntas.2026.14.01.05Keywords:
Effective dose, age- dependence, Nuclear Medicine Diagnostic Exams, RADAR-2017Abstract
This study presents a standardized reassessment of age-dependent effective doses for commonly performed diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures using the cur- rent International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) dosimetric framework. Unlike previous investigations that focused on individual radiophar- maceuticals, this work applies a unified methodology to multiple commonly used diagnostic agents, enabling consistent comparisons across adult and pediatric ref- erence phantoms. Effective doses were calculated for ⁹⁹mTc-sulfur colloid (liver and spleen imaging), ¹⁸F-FDG (whole-body positron emission tomography), ⁹⁹mTc-MIBI (myocardial perfusion imaging), and ¹³¹I-MIBG (neuroendocrine tu- mor imaging) using biokinetic models and dose coefficients from ICRP Publica- tions 103, 106, and 128 implemented in the SNMMI Nuclear Medicine Radiation Dose Tool (RADAR-2017). Pediatric-administered activities were estimated by linear body-weight scaling based on ORNL/ICRP reference phantoms. Adult effective doses were 2.1 mSv for ⁹⁹mTc-sulfur colloid, 4.8 mSv for ¹⁸F-FDG, 5.8–6.0 mSv for ⁹⁹mTc-MIBI myocardial perfusion imaging, and 7.0 mSv for ¹³¹I- MIBG. Although pediatric-administered activities were substantially reduced, children exhibited higher effective doses per unit of administered activity due to age-dependent anatomical characteristics, reduced photon attenuation, and in- creased tissue radiosensitivity. These findings highlight the importance of age- specific dosimetric assessment and standardized activity selection in diagnostic nuclear medicine. While the present study does not evaluate image quality or clinical performance, it provides a robust dosimetric framework that may support protocol optimization, benchmarking against contemporary reference values, radiation protection practices, and future development of patient-specific imag- ing protocols. Effective dose is presented as a radiation protection quantity for comparing procedures and for supporting optimization strategies, rather than for estimating individual patient risk.
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