Five Obligatory Radiation Dose Management Requirements to Excel in Medical Imaging
Medical imaging is becoming as essential to patient care as labs and pathology, while the concern for radiation safety is still prime. Such concern has generated multiple mandates related to dose management. California is the first state to mandate improved radiation dose management with concern for patient care. Moreover, dose management regulations are a substantial operational burden for healthcare providers.
With the technological advancement in medical imaging, such as the incorporation of dose-lowering technologies and harmful and biological effects, radiation exposure has witnessed a declining trend in the past few years.
This article will give a brief about radiation dose management and its requirement in medical imaging.
What is radiation dose management?
The amount of radiation absorbed by a patient during a diagnostic imaging procedure is termed as radiation dose. A higher dose of radiation can increase the risk of developing cancer and can cause tissue damage in later stages of life.
The measurement of the real dose exposure to the patient and the management of this dose radiation through adjustments made in real-time, such as variation in patient positioning, is called radiation dose management.
It majorly requires the application of software solutions for assessing the quantity and quality of the absolute dose exposure to the patient due to the radiation emitted during diagnostic imaging. Diagnostic imaging systems involve X-Rays and computed tomography (CT) scanners that are used to figure out the associated risks. System optimization, detection of significant exposures, quality assurance (QA), and dose documentation of patients are some of the primary tasks of a radiation dose management system.
The growing initiatives on radiation dose management for pediatric procedures and on-cloud dose management solutions are some of the major growth opportunities in the global radiation dose management market.
According to the BIS Research report, the global radiation dose management market was valued at $212.8 million in 2021 and is anticipated to reach $586.7 million by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 10.30% during the forecast period 2022–2032.
Find more details on this report in this FREE sample.
Common Imperatives for Radiation Dose Management
The growth in the global radiation dose management market is expected to raise the prevalence of chronic disorders requiring diagnostic intervention. Five obligatory requirements of radiation dose management in medical imaging are mentioned as follows:
Data Aggregation and Processing
Though the data required for effective dose management is available in medical imaging departments already, it is often not used sufficiently. To perform its intended tasks, a dose management system (DMS) must acquire dosimetry parameters to store data that can be easily searched since analyzing the data in dose management is time-consuming and tedious. DMS software caters to such issues by gathering and consolidating large amounts of dose data automatically generated by imaging modalities.
Compliance with Regulations and Best Practices
One of the optimum applications of DMS is to record the dose metrics, assign protocols to corresponding diagnostic reference levels (DRLs), and compare them with the respective thresholds to ensure compliance with national and local DRLs. Along with this, a DMS must fulfill various criteria, such as identifying, analyzing, and processing significant dose events and exporting dose data for reporting to guarantee compliance.
Visualizations and Insights
Data visualization helps to gain insights from data and communicate them to others. DMS helps in analyzing a complete set of dose data and automatically visualizing it. Moreover, the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format allows decision-makers to understand complex data quickly and identify patterns. A DMS displays dose charts, links from any dose parameter to the corresponding image, and reports modality load as the timeline.
Interoperability with Existing IT Infrastructure
To integrate a DMS in clinical practice seamlessly, the requirement is not only an inbound connection to the picture-archiving and communication system of the hospital but also the outbound interfaces to third parties that allow dose information to be transmitted to other information technology (IT) systems, such as the radiology information system. The DMS needs to be integrated with a central IT infrastructure to meet these requirements.
Enhancements and Scalability
A modern DMS is tailored to each institution’s workload and size. Some of the most flexible DMS products offer software as a service (SaaS) deployed via the cloud. This model eliminates the need for local IT infrastructure and related upfront investment to reduce effort and cost of ownership. Moreover, SaaS allows quicker scalability with continuous upgrades with zero additional costs and reliable access to the most recent functionalities.
Conclusion
Conventionally, data transfer and dose recording were done manually; however, the advent of advanced dose management software has enabled automated data transfer from imaging systems into the DMS for automated dose recording. DMS reduces the need for human intervention, which increases the accuracy of medical imaging.
Interested to know more about the developing technologies in your industry vertical? Get the latest market studies and insights from BIS Research. Connect with us at hello@bisresearch.com to learn and understand more.
