A new radiation alert system that monitors an individual’s exposure over time is making its way to Los Angeles.
Software called the DICOM Index Tracker is in use at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and is expected to be distributed nationally in the near future.
The DICOM captures radiation dose information and stores it in a centralized database linked to electronic medical records.
Data is entered after every encounter with a TSA scanner, an X-ray machine or a nuclear reactor. If your total dose gets too high, you are notified.
Data is entered after every encounter with a TSA scanner, an X-ray machine or a nuclear reactor. If your total dose gets too high, you are notified.
“We’ve set thresholds and so if it rises above a certain threshold, then e-mails go off and pagers go off and text messages go off and alert people,” said researcher Bill Pavlice.
The Japanese disaster heightened consciousness of the dangers of radiation.
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While the levels of exposure near the damaged Japanese plants were not enough to cause severe radiation sickness or death, according to published reports, we do know that even low exposure may increase the risk of cancer over time.
We are each exposed to radiation from the ground and the air every day and millions of x-rays and CAT scans are perfomed in the United States every year.
About 15 percent of our total radiation exposure comes from medical scans, procedures and treatments.
A single CAT scan of the abdomen and pelvis may amount to the equivalent of 10 years of background radiation.
But there has not been a way to track the total amount we are exposed to.
The hope is the tracker will help us gauge our exposure and make informed decisions. The system can warn doctors if a patient is reaching unacceptable levels of cumulative radiation exposure.
