Implications of Medical Low Dose Radiation Exposure (MEDIRAD)

MEDIRAD aims to enhance the scientific bases and clinical practice of radiation protection (RP) in the medical field and thereby addresses the need to understand and evaluate the health effects of low dose ionising radiation exposure from diagnostic and therapeutic imaging and from off-target effects in radiotherapy (RT). MEDIRAD will pursue 3 major operational objectives: First, it will improve organ dose estimation and registration to inform clinical practice, optimise doses, set recommendations and provide adequate dosimetry for clinicalepidemiological studies of effects of medical radiation. Second, it aims to evaluate and understand the effects of medical exposures, focusing on the two major endpoints of public health relevance: cardiovascular effects of low to moderate doses of radiation from RT in breast cancer treatment incl. understanding of mechanisms; and longterm effects on cancer risk of low doses from CT in children. Third, it will develop science-based consensus policy recommendations for the effective protection of patients, workers and the general public. Within the 4-year project a multi-disciplinary consortium will, in close interaction with European medical associations, MELODI and EURADOS (1), develop a tool to determine image quality to maximise optimisation of RP in medical imaging, (2) improve and develop new individual organ/anatomical structure dosimetry from chest CT, I131 administration, fluoroscopy-guided procedures, hybrid imaging, and RT for breast cancer and interlinks with image quality measures, (3) conduct epidemiological studies of consequences of RT and CT, (4) identify potential novel imaging and circulating biomarkers and mechanisms of radiation effects, (5) develop innovative risk models, (6) develop and implement for the first time a European repository of patient dose and imaging data, (7) develop sciencebased recommendations, and (8) introduce novel approaches to bring together the nuclear and medical sectors.